What does it mean to be happy? The answer changes depending on who you ask, what mood they’re in, where they live, what their own experiences/philosophies are, and more. If you live in a capitalist society, happiness is based on how much money you have or what you can afford. If you live in a socialist society, happiness is based on what can be shared with others so as to uplift its members. If you live in an individualistic society, dreams become the powerhouse for all your actions and the metric by which happiness is based. If you live in a populist society, your happiness may be based on whether or not you’re viewed as among the “pure” or the “corrupt.” Interestingly, one might believe themselves to be part of one and discover they actually exist in another. This is a small piece of writer/director Jerome Yoo’s first feature-length production Mongrels, screening as part of the Pink Peach section of the 2025 Atlanta Film Festival. Split into three parts, Yoo’s dramedy Mongrels explores familial tension amid issues of racial assimilation, cultural hegemony, and what it means to be happy.
L-R: Jae-Hyun Kim as Sonny Lee, Sein Jin as Hana, and Da-Nu Nam as Hajoon in MONGRELS. Photo courtesy of Game Theory Films.
Seeking a fresh start for his two children, Sonny Lee (Jae-Hyun Kim) moves from Korea to Canada with his teen and preteen kids, Hajoon and Hana (Da-Nu Nam and Sein Jin, respectively), where he will work alongside his former serviceman Paul Joo (Sangbum Kang) hunting for wild dogs plaguing the local farmland. Maintaining their normal customs while also trying to assimilate brings about normal tensions, however, the longer the familial trio remains, the more distance grows between them that’s only filled with sorrow and loneliness.
Jae-Hyun Kim as Sonny Lee in MONGRELS. Photo courtesy of Game Theory Films and Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2024.
When one states that a project is a first-time feature, it conjures an image of someone just starting out. Looking at Yoo’s catalogue, however, this was merely a matter of time and opportunity. Since his first short in 2019, Gong Ju, Yoo’s gone on to release three more shorts and a music video, all in obvious preparation for this project. I describe it as obvious because there’s an assuredness to Mongrels that courses throughout the project. It matters not whether the audience understands a choice at the start of the film because what follows well past the introduction breadcrumbs to the meaning that is revealed at the end. Of course, this seems obvious to state as any story seeks to elucidate its ideas (even the ones with the murky or open-ended conclusions), but, given the slow and split nature of the film, it’s important to identify here. Yoo takes extraordinary pains to slow things down so that character choices, actor reactions to a moment, carry weight that lingers from one perspective to the next. Much like the film is broken into three pieces, Yoo creates a three-prong approach to amplify the intention.
L-R: Jae-Hyun Kim as Sonny Lee, Da-Nu Nam as Hajoon, and Sein Jin as Hana in MONGRELS. Photo courtesy of Game Theory Films and Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2024.
The first prong is in the technical approach to each section — God, Cowboy, and Blonde. The first, centered on Sonny, is a tight 4:3. One might presume that this is to give Mongrels an indie flair, a visual look to convey art without substance. My read on this choice is to make manifest the way that Sonny feels — under pressure, constrained, struggling to maintain tradition and his Korean perspective in this new place. This section does more than setup the notions of assimilation and sadness impacting the Lee family, it drills into what’s eating at Sonny as the head of the family. It’s up to him to make the choices that will care for his family, for all the good and ill that it may bring upon him through his children’s eyes. For what good is a god whose own children refuse him? Put another way, what good is Sonny as a father if he can’t keep his family together, and this new job is only sustainable if Sonny is able to keep himself within the good graces of his employers? What good is a god, then, if he’s absent control over his own well-being? Suddenly, the 4:3 ratio makes a great deal of sense as another method, supplementing Kim’s performance, that conveys the persistent pain of a troubled deity. As we progress deeper into the film, the ratio shifts, expanding each time, until the visual perspective takes up the entire screen, itself suggesting that the world is worth opening up to, inserting a sense of optimism in a melancholic story that’s yet to earn it. With each shift, the ratio tells us something about the characters, about what we should expect to observe, but does so in such an imperceptible way that you’d be forgiven for having not noticed.
The second prong comes in the form of the dialogue used and the way the language shifts to metaphors that transcend into reality before us. The first glimpse of Sonny’s boss, Scott Larson (Morgan Derera), is via a television program (is it proselytization, political ad, or other?) that Hana is watching during the first segment. We’ve already seen the wild dogs roaming the woods and the traps set to capture them before now, but this is our first opportunity to learn why. Rather than making it the focal point of the scene, Yoo focuses on Sonny preparing to complete an offering to their ancestors, Scott’s words playing in the background as Sonny and Hajoon move around, Hana reclined on the couch watching the television. We hear partial words and phrases, our ears pricking up at, pun intended, dog whistles as Scott refers to the “mongrels” in the woods, invading the farms from who knows where, and damaging the neighborhood. Taken literally, the words are meant to establish why Sonny’s come to this part of Canada, but the language and vocal delivery carry a nasty edge of centuries of racism and xenophobia usually from European immigrants and their descendants against either an Indigenous or immigrant population. (See: Canada’s Residential Schools and the United States’s relationship with the peoples who helped build the nation whom they then betrayed.) Sonny is a hunter, someone who seems to tune with animals; this makes him valuable to Scott, yet one never gets a moment of sincerity from Derera (a compliment) as there’s always an edge that Sonny is one bad outcome from laying in a trap himself.
L-R: Jae-Hyun Kim as Sonny Lee and Sein Jin as Hana in MONGRELS. Photo courtesy of Game Theory Films and Atlanta Film Festival 2025.
The third prong is the presentation of the Lee family and the performances from the actors. There have been stories of loss and isolation before, but each chapter here reckons with a different element of it while sewing together a larger narrative of a family in crisis. Sonny’s chapter sets up who all the characters are and who he wants them to be (beholden to their customs and rules, while also appreciative of where they are) while Hajoon’s pushes forward on the trials that befall a generation of immigrants who try to take advantage of being in a different place, a choice which somehow always puts them against their parents. Why bring someone to a new place and then grow resentful at them for not clinging to past traditions? Specifically, Yoo sets up Hajoon as someone who wants to do right by his father and younger sister, but also sees Canada as a place to discover who he is outside of his family. Conversely, Sonny lambasts Hajoon for being unfaithful to his family, going so far as to try to sting Hajoon by calling him a conscription deserter, despite the fact that Sonny likely forced Hajoon to come to Canada. This, of course, plays into the notion of what kind of god is Sonny who would belittle his creation despite it following instructions, but it makes the point about the battle between maintaining tradition and assimilation. Even Hana is given an arc wherein it’s her carrying on of her late mother’s magical view of the world that troubles her brother and father, as though holding onto the belief for wishes somehow makes her worldview invalid, as well as a more direct glimpse into the notion of immigrants as dolls for colonizers. Without question, what it does do is setup one of the more touching familial moments in which Sonny’s loss for words transforms into a feeling akin to folie à deux. Kim, Nam, and Jin — for all the faults of their characters — make us turn inward to examine our own choices, our own perspectives, and ask ourselves how we would do things differently. But then, I viewed this film as a parent of children whose worst fear is the loss of their mother, so poignancy courses throughout the script and its execution for me.
Mongrels is not at all subtle, and this both works for and against it. Its symbolism isn’t obscure, making one almost feel like they’re waiting for the film to get to its point, thereby creating distance between a curious audience and the narrative. Thankfully, whether in the quiet spaces of the story or while on the hunt, there’s enough of interest to keep one’s mind from wandering too far astray, remaining with the pack, as it were. If nothing else, Mongrels is a clear demonstration that Yoo’s a director with intent and vision, and he’s only just begun.
Screening during Atlanta Film Festival 2025.
Available on VOD May 20th, 2025.
For more information, head either to the official ATLFF 2025 or Game Theory Films Mongrels webpage.
Final Score: 3.5 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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