Questioning the world with ‘FAQ’ filmmaker Kim Da-min

FAQ recently made its North American premiere at the New York Asian Film Festival. Writer and director Kim Da-min recently spoke to JoySauce about her feature film debut, and how it’s sharply distinctive from her recent work, A Killer Paradox, a revenge thriller series released on Netflix earlier this year. Kim studied film, psychology, and cultural anthropology, and directed short films prior to FAQ, which came to fruition after winning a screenwriting competition.

Her own observations and personal experiences eventually led to FAQ—Kim learned how to make rice wine (makgeolli) and took a Persian language class.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Melissa Kim: What inspired you to make this film?
Kim Da-min: For me, as a child, I didn’t go to a lot of hakwons [private education academies] that you see in the film. But I was always observing a lot, and as a hobby I really like going to citizen culture centers and learning new things, and in that process I took a traditional wine-making class. Those little experiences just sort of combined into this film.

MK: What made you choose the English title, FAQ, and the Korean title, 막걸리가 알려줄거야 (The rice wine will tell you)?
KD: The original Korean title is 막걸리가 알려줄거야, which is “The makgeolli will tell you.” So I wanted to imply and think about what if literally only the makgeolli knows and we don’t know? For the English title, I thought if we made a direct translation it would be difficult to [understand]. But we decided on the English title because I feel like the most common questions we have as people and as human beings is, “Why are we living, how do we live?
So that’s how we ended on the English title, FAQ.

MK: It’s fun. In the film you chose to include elements of magical realism, what led you to that decision?
KD: There’s actually a lot of projects in Korea that talk about education. But I wanted to talk about education with a different tone and focus on not the adults, but solely focus on the child that’s going through that education system.

Dong-chun is not a rebellious child, and she’s not in active conflict with her parents, but it really is about the process of her questioning the reasoning for going through the educational system. I was thinking about how to build that world, the most effective way to build that world to make that come to life.

MK: What was the casting process like for Dong-chun’s character?
KD: We went through a lot of auditions. The longest process in the entire production was finding [Park] Na-eun to play Dong-chun because there were so many child actors who were great at acting and beautiful, but I didn’t feel they were the right fit for the character, because Dong-chun is a person with a really strong inner world.

There are moments where she’s spacing out, and she’s in her own world, and I really needed to capture that. At the very last moment in the casting process, [actor] Na-eun came in, that’s when everyone said, “Oh, she is Dong-chun.”

MK: There were very specific things that stood out in the film—the makgeolli [rice wine], Persian language, and Morse code. What made you choose these items in particular?
KD: These are all things that I’ve actually learned near [my] home. The Persian language was a free class offered to citizens as a special foreign language class. I’ve also made makgeolli in these classes before.

I was thinking, “What’s something that you feel is totally unnecessary at this point in time in her [Dong-chun’s] life?” I felt that Persian would feel a bit more outlandish in that sense of utility. It’s different when you think of, for example, the Math Olympics. I was trying to figure out what would viewers feel a bit baffled by.

MK: The major themes I saw and thought about in your film—the private education system, the hakwons, the competition among friends, it struck me as very Korean. Were there things that you wanted to say differently to a Korean audience as opposed to a non-Korean audience?
KD: I do feel the takeaway may be a little different for Korea as opposed to foreign audiences. They might feel a bit more similarly in places like China or Japan because you have to test to place [kids] into kindergarten. So when foreign audiences watch the film, I’m sure some people are thinking, “Oh, this is really exaggerated.”

From the reactions from the Korean audiences thus far, not many people take it as an exaggerated take. They’re all like, “Yeah, this is normal, that’s how it is.”

For example, Persian, I’m sure it’ll be useful if you learn it, but the central question I have is that children are not given an explanation as to why or why they have to do it at this moment in time. It’s pretty regular for a child in school right now in Korea to be attending seven to eight hakwons a day. But I understand that tonally the reception regarding that could be different from audience to audience.

MK: I thought the connection between Dong-chun and her uncle, Young-jin, and how their paths cross, was really interesting. Can you talk a little bit about these two characters and their connection?
KD: When you think of this film, Dong-chun is the center of this film, and then you have the constellation of adults, the mom Hae-jin and the uncle Young-jin. They’re family members on completely opposite sides of the spectrum when you think about the educational system, but they are also dealing with their own dilemmas. I felt that in order to have Dong-chun make her decision in the very end, she had to be able to experience those two different sides, both Young-jin’s side and Hae-jin’s side, and that’s why they cross paths with each other.

MK: Dong-chun also stands in stark contrast to her parents. The mother’s role stood out because she’s the one primarily managing her child’s education. Did you want viewers to ask, “Why aren’t the parents questioning things the way Dong-chun is questioning things?”
KD: I think a lot of projects that deal with education start by thinking that the mom is the central antagonist and the mom’s overarching desire for their child that follows that, “Oh, if we were to just switch moms, everything would be dandy.”

But if you look at Hae-jin, the mom, she is continuously floating in between these dilemmas and questions. For example, Dong-chun has to do homework [at night], but then she can’t [get enough] sleep, which she needs to grow taller.

When it comes to her personal experience as a woman, her career has been cut short because of the birth of her child. Actually there’s a lot of women in Korea where that is the case—after giving birth, they are unable to return to the workforce.

But it’s not just her or her overarching desire for her child, she’s also trying to get the answer to “What is the right path?”

MK: Does Dong-chun strike you as a lonely character?
KD: Yes, is my initial answer. But I feel like she has her own strong individual inner world, where she has her furry creature friends who she relies on. But my central work was to see that she is on the path of questioning and to see that she grows from that process.

MK: How long were you working on the script? And this project?
KD: The first draft of the script I wrote in like a week, but revisions took longer. I was also going back and forth writing the script for the drama series A Killer Paradox, so I can’t really tell how much time I spent solely on this project. The funding process was a lot longer than the writing process; I remember writing the first draft in 2019, but we went into production in 2022.

MK: So you were writing FAQ and A Killer Paradox at the same time. These two works are so different; how did each come about?
KD: This project FAQ itself came from winning a script competition—I was able to get a lot of meetings with production companies, but none of them actually wanted to make this film. They were always saying, “Oh, what about something else?”

One of the projects that was floated was A Killer Paradox. Because the funding process for FAQ was a bit long, in the meantime, I also needed to pay the bills. So that was how the writing project came about, that’s how I was doing both at the same time.

MK: Was there anything else you wanted to mention?
KD: I think right now I’m really curious to see what the audience reaction is like, because I’ve already seen a lot of reaction and feedback from Korean audiences, but I don’t think I’ve had a foreign audience before. I’m curious to see what they think about these things, it’ll be interesting.