The legend of the 구미호 (gumiho) is familiar to Esther. She is a vengeful spirit-succubus doomed to consume the livers of human people until she is able to return to human form. What surprises Esther is running into one on her idyllic Northeastern college campus.

The 구미호 (gumiho) is a well worn folktale. Though the fox-spirit is most often cast as a female succubus intent on seducing men and stealing their livers, in this story, the gumiho is recast as a kind of neutral spirit. She watches over Esther, but passes no judgement or advice. She simply sits with her when Esther sneaks out for a cigarette. Here, she is cast as an older sister looking out for a young girl who doesn’t quite know her place in the world.

As the two become friends, Esther's fox-unnie is the only person she can talk to about her grandmother’s house in Jecheon and smoke cigarettes in front of without feeling judged. But as the people around her become increasingly aware she’s made “friends” with a wild animal, Esther becomes the object of a great deal of unwanted attention and misunderstanding.

Esther knows that her family sent her to live in Korea so that she might shine as brightly as she could in a place full of opportunity and without the kinds of gendered expectations that her grandmother grew up with. The irony, she has found, is that the demand of living abroad is that she must always and only shine, never falter on her cues in the choir she sings with Ruth, never complain, never fail.

Arbitrarily caught between these two worlds, the world of her fox and the world of her friend Ruth, Esther finds herself unable to bring together these two people(?) animals(?) that she loves.

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The concept for this film was originally based in a short story that I wrote and published with Asymptote Journal. The story stylistically blends a fantasy premise into a realist setting to question what counts as "reality" and what does not. For Esther, half her life experiences---half of her reality---is entirely inaccessible to those around her. Is it her fault, then, that they cannot hear or understand the fox? Or is it perhaps their lack of ability to believe and understand outside their own thought systems that prevents them from believing in and hearing the gumiho?

This film oscillates between the fantastical fox that Esther talks to at night, the choir that Esther sings with at chapel during the days, Esther's family hometown in the mountains of Jecheon, South Korea. The contrast between three key motifs reflect the disjointed nature of modernity, particularly embodied in the diasporic experience. Esther's life and personhood is made up of three things that never can, and never will, overlap.

Critically, however, Jecheon is not the 'answer' to Esther's struggles at school. In fact, our depiction of Korea highlights its complex history with patriarchy. The task at hand is to imagine new kinds of understanding and belonging outside of this binary.

So why this story, this team, and now?

This project aims to use both Korean and American storytelling infrastructures to do justice to the complicated histories and social structures of both AAPI experiences and the places we come from. Too few stories draw on multinational crews to do justice to both sides of this reality.

The group of people that have come together over this project is perhaps the most exciting part of this campaign. The complexity of this story both technically (in the VFX and SFX elements) and narratively (in the cross-cultural elements), meant that I never thought this project would be possible. Thanks to the support of our industry veteran EP and his network, and the hard work of creatives in Korea and the US, I am confident that our team will do justice to both the depiction of Korea and the US in this project.

If the curse of globalization and modernity is that it has destabilized the concept of our "places" (literally and figuratively) in the world, the blessing is that the influx of these perspectives allows us to take fresh lenses on existing stories, and take inspiration from worldviews that we would have otherwise never been able to.

-- Director Clara Park

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Befitting the theme of duality wrought by modernity, the references that this film draws on represent collisions between worlds. Emerald Fennell's Saltburn, Isaac Lee Chung's Minari, and Lee Chang Dong's Burning, are all references for the experiences of people colliding, often violently, with cultural and societal structures that modern capitalism, immigration and globalization have made everyday parts of our world. In these three films, the small, 'everyday' violences of this reality culminate in murder, fire, and murder and fire.

Stylistically, our project also renders 'the other' through the metaphorical device of a folktale legend brought to a realist, contemporary setting. In the fashion of Bong Joon-ho's Okja and Kaneto Shindo's Kuroneko, the impossible and fantastical are rendered as a natural part of everyday life through sentient, folkloricly styled animals. The device visualizes the way that the characters at the margins of the societies they live in see and experience the world differently. Their relationship to the magical, as their perspectives on the world, may not be understandable to the characters around them, but are made legible to the audience.

***



The core of this film is a layered and nuanced reflection on the perspective created between two worlds. As such, it is critical for the success of this film to have the resources to shoot both in Korea and in the US.

At this stage in our process, we have been lucky to raise the funds to greenlight the Korea portion of our shoot. Additionally, thanks to the support of our Executive Producer, Director Song Hyun-wook and local VFX partners, we have established the necessary infrastructure to pull off what will be a locationally and technically demanding process.

What we need your help with is raising funds to greenlight the US portion of our shoot. Particularly because this project has very specific technical demands to make our fox of legend come to life, your support is truly critical to doing this picture justice.

The money in this round of funding will largely go towards compensating the incredible group of creatives we are working with, the equipment we need to make this project work, the transportation costs associated with assembling a crew on our location (Yale University) and the food and housing costs associated with the international nature of our crew.

Our project will go into production in Korea during the last week of August, 2025, to catch the tail end of the monsoon season, and we will be shooting in New Haven during the first week of October, 2025. Thanks to our VFX and post production partners here in Korea, we hope to have a final cut edited and processed by the first half of 2026, and intend to submit to festivals in the 2026 cycle.

Even if you cannot contribute, it would be incredibly helpful to have your support by sharing and clicking the "follow" button to get updates on our campaign. In order for us to remain qualifying contenders for the production grant and mentorship program being offered in affiliation with Gold House, we need 350 followers by the end of our campaign on July 2nd.

I truly believe that this story can and will speak to the contradictions and complexities of our increasingly entwined, culturally entangled world. I hope you can support me and my team in telling that story with a production structure and group of people that reflects this ethos. Help me bring together Korean, American, and diasporic talent to make this film a reality!

stretch goals and timeline

Our crowdfunding goal of 12,250 USD means that our project will get the greenlight at 9,800 USD. If we can't raise that by July 2nd, we lose everything! Please support us in making it to this goal!

Though we have set our crowdfunding goal at 12,250 to support our stateside shoot, the reality is that it will likely cost us at least 10,000 USD more to do justice to our US scenes. Reaching a stretch goal of 15,000 USD, would heavily decrease the burden on the staff and crew spending their own time and money on this project, and allow us to direct more funds to post-production, which, in this case, is critical to the quality of our film.

what you can do...

Even if you can't contribute financially, there are lots of ways to support our project!

• Follow us on instagram @gumiho_film!
• Send this seed&spark to a friend to follow or pledge!
• Follow us on seed&spark to help us hit 350 followers!