Na-moo-eobs-neun san

"Treeless Mountain" is a rather unique and beautiful movie. It will take you through a multitude of emotions, ranging from sadness, to happiness, to filling you with hope and inspiration. This is really all owned up to the spectacular skills of the director So Yong Kim.

The story in "Treeless Mountain" is about a mom who have to leave her two young girls with their aunt as she sets out to find their estranged father. She leaves her daughters with a piggy bank and promises to return when it is full. The aunt gives the girls coins as they do hard chores but are otherwise mostly left to their own devices. Upon proving too difficult to take care of the girls, the aunt takes them to stay with the grandparents at their farm, where they girls come to know the true meaning of family value.

"Treeless Mountain" is not a fast-paced movie, it actually doesn't really take you long or far, but in the course of its length, you will be taken on a very life-affirming and inspiration journey with the two children as they take care of each other. The story told in "Treeless Mountain" is the type that will sink into your mind and stay with you for a long time, because it is really beautifully told and it is a very heart-warming story.

The movie wouldn't have been anything without the cast. And the performance by the two young girls, Hee-yeon Kim (playing Jin) and Song-hee Kim (playing Bin) were nothing short of spectacular. Their performances were so amazing, and they really carried the movie with grace. Of course, the director has a lot of credit here, but still, I was in awe at the talent of these two young girls.

If you enjoy Korean cinema, then you definitely should get acquainted with "Treeless Mountain", especially if you like dramas that will stick with you for a long, long time.

I was extremely excited to see this film at the Cleveland International Film Festival. The film is full of atmosphere and the two children were excellent at portraying emotions through their faces. There are many close ups of faces which are breathtaking. It's definitely a cerebral film and it's one you have to completely immerse yourself to feel the full emotional effect.

The film was, obviously, on a shoe string budget and it shows throughout the film. The editing was quite choppy at times. Other than that I have no complaints.

This is my first Korean film and I'm hoping to see more.

This film is about two girls left on their own, to their own devices, trying to survive the mental burdens -if not the physical ones as well- of being abandoned by their mother. It is a serene, moderately-paced, well-crafted film. The director's ability to get such high quality performance from two little girls is nothing short of amazing. As to its general mood, Treeless Mountain is a beautiful film which can, at certain times, be sad and heart-breaking, and at others cheerful and hopeful, presenting us a myriad of emotions throughout its duration, and which depicts how hope endures and how children view and can adapt to changing conditions and environment. To sum it up, this fine piece of Korean cinema is an innocent and emotional piece of art which I would sincerely recommend to anyone.

I am a little surprised that some of the comments here seem to be written by people with limited cinematic experience and who seem to think that a good film must contain huge amounts of CGI effects, explosions and Dumb US teenie actors flashing fake tans, implanted body parts and pearly white teeth.

This is a wonderful film, a film about human emotion through the eyes of children barely old enough to know what emotion is let alone act it.

I commend it to anyone who wants to sit down and spend an evening learning about a different culture writ large for those of us too dumb to know any better.

Perhaps the first duty of a parent is to make their children believe that their lives are blessed, until they're old enough to deal with the fact that they are not. 'Treeless Mountain' may be slight, but it's pregnant with the horror implicit in its story of two young children abandoned by their mother. Director So Yong-Kim gets some beautiful performances from his very young cast (especially Hee-yeon Kim, who plays the older girl), there's a touch of eastern exoticism for the western audience (grasshoppers for dinner, anyone?), a treatment of poverty both sensitive and realistic, and in the end, a gleam of hope through the pain.