This story is part of True/False Conversations, a series of in-depth interviews with the filmmakers of this year’s True/False Film Fest. Find the rest of series here.
In School for Defectors, Director Jeremy Workman embeds himself in a tiny boarding school in Busan, South Korea. The school, like many others, has energetic teenagers filling the narrow hallways with laughter and conversation; but this school has a story: Every one of its 20 students is a North Korean defector.
KBIA's Charlie Dahlgren spoke with Workman ahead of the film's premiere at True/False. Here's an excerpt from their conversation.
Charlie Dahlgren: Looking at your filmography, this seems to be the documentary with the biggest divide — in terms of lived experience, language, culture — between you and your subjects. Did that make this a frightening project to take on? And how did you make sure that you were properly telling these stories as a true outsider?
Jeremy Workman: That was really tricky, and it was new territory for me, and I spent a lot of time just kind of embedding myself within the school.
We spent two weeks on a practice shoot where I accompanied the school on a long class trip to Japan. And not a frame of that is in the movie, but I did it as a way to kind of get everybody used to the idea that I was just part of the team, and I was part of the school, and in the end, the students really began to feel like our crew was not just part of the school, but was kind of part of their community. And that was extremely important.
Dahlgren: As a filmmaker, you've developed a niche out of painting these incredibly intimate portraits. I mean, at one point in this film, the camera is seemingly squeezed into this tiny dorm room with four other students. Did the close-quarters nature of this project pose any unique challenges to your filmmaking process?
Workman: I think I started to realize very early that the style of this movie was going to be so intimate and personal.
And that this kind of claustrophobic feel of the school was actually going to work to better tell this story — that we're sort of in the tight quarters with them, and it feels like we're really with these students as they're in class and as they're kind of dreaming big for themselves. So yes, it was when I first got there, I was like, "Oh my god, we're making a movie about — that's all set in this tiny, tiny building." And then I started to really realize that that was one of the assets of the story, that we were kind of so contained in this world that it felt like a jewel box.
[W]hen I first got there, I was like, 'Oh my god, we're making a movie ... that's all set in this tiny, tiny building.' And then I started to really realize that that was one of the assets of the story, that we were kind of so contained in this world that it felt like a jewel box.Jeremy Workman
Dahlgren: Now, despite the intimacy, there are a couple of really big, sweeping themes throughout this documentary. And one that really stuck out to me was choosing love and self acceptance in the present over guilt and resentment for the past. How do you organically find these through-lines when working with such a large cast of characters?
Workman: So, this is also a really interesting aspect of the film, and it's something that we thought about a lot: The bigger approach, and the bigger vision of it was about looking at it thematically — looking [at] this as a story of youth, as a story of kids who maybe are uncertain about who they are. And through the course of being at this school, they find their mojo, they find out who they are going to become. And it becomes this kind of collective group coming of age story where you're watching all these kids emerge over the course of a movie. And I really did love this concept where maybe the success of one student that we're focusing on — it really becomes the success of the entire student body.
