Stille Liv / The Quiet Migration

The camera sweeps across fields and cow pastures. In the barn, the animals wait to be fed. Carl and his father Hans are a seasoned team on their farm in the Danish countryside. After their chores, they bring large appetites to the kitchen table. Carl’s parents Hans and Karen are certain that their son, adopted from South Korea, will one day take over the farm. While the scenes of daily life on the farm seem almost documentary, others are irritating, as if they were from another time. Or are they illustrated fantasies? Is that Carl playing football with a burning bale of hay as a small boy? During a family celebration, the young man feels strangely left out. Suddenly he imagines a girl who, like him, is from somewhere else. She lays her head on his shoulder. In her film with autobiographical elements, Malene Choi explores the feeling of not belonging to an environment that is familiar, but has never become home.