Choi Sedam’s grandmother, Yoon Young-ja, wanted to write a novel titled A Woman Dancing on the Waves. She spent her life as a shaman, building the family up from nothing. But she never managed to write the novel and eventually forgot who the ‘woman dancing on the waves’ was. Making her grandmother, who is gradually losing her memory, the protagonist, Choi unfolds a strange and remarkable family history. The conversations with her grandmother as they go back and forth between the nursing home and her house are interrupted by conversations with the dead, and memories of the past mingle with the confusion of the present. The grandfather’s novel enters the story, too, layered with the family’s memories and complicated emotions. Finally, at the very last shamanic ritual held to clear out the grandmother’s old shrine, all the emotions that have been summoned erupt into a possessed dance. They say, “All gods bring hardships on people.” Did the grandmother’s god give this family nothing but hardship? Tracing back decades of memories and taking a long trip through the past, the film ultimately becomes one family’s extraordinary history, or perhaps an autobiography of the novel the grandmother never wrote.
Her short fiction film Deul (2023) was invited to the Seoul International Pride Film Festival. Her work explores themes of memory and forgetting, family history, and women’s lives. A Woman Dancing on the Waves is her feature directorial debut.
From Busan International Film Festival 2026, No. 31
