26 Day Archaeology Revised Edition

Experimental film, color, Full HD, 44.31 min., 2024

“This Film based on Tran Thanh Lan’s diary”

Park Kyong Ju has devoted over 17 years to studying the diary of Tran Thanh Lan, a Vietnamese migrant woman who died after moving to Korea through an illegal international marriage involving human trafficking.
A single-channel video 26 Day Archeology Revised Edition showing key scenes from Tran Thanh Lan’s Diary. The film shows key scenes sequentially, page by page of the diary. These scenes show the truth that the artist discovered while drawing the storyboard one by one. In the spring of 2019, when the statute of limitations for the death case expired after 10 years, the Korean prosecutors and police did not accept the truth that the artist claimed, citing insufficient evidence. The letter X that divides the screen is an expression of mourning for the deceased who did not receive social recognition for his unjust death. At the same time, it is an artist’s resistance to public power that ignores the truth.
Park’s works symbolically demonstrate how the institution of marriage, which should be founded on love, is commodified under the domination of capital. An Immersive experimental experience set to a purely musical soundtrack. (Electronic music by Tri Minh)

Director’s statement

Vietnamese woman Tran Thanh Lan arrived in Korea on January 11, 2008, having been trafficked for an international marriage. However, after five days of living together in Korea, her mother-in-law and husband demanded a divorce. She was locked in her new home until a divorce agreement was reached, and a week before she was due to return to Vietnam, she fell to her death from the 14th floor of her apartment. This film is based on her diary, the only record she left behind. At the time of this incident, I was working as the founder and editor of an independent media outlet specializing in immigration issues. As a journalist, I first focused on this incident and reported on it in a reportage-style news article. Later, with the help of a Vietnamese acquaintance, I translated the entire story and based on it, I created the play “Lan’s Diary,” which I directed and staged from 2011 to 2013. In 2015, while preparing to produce a documentary film based on her diary, I drew a storyboard while archaeologically researching the sentences in the diary, and at that time, I discovered that she had been locked in her room. I stopped making the documentary, and I filed a criminal complaint and civil lawsuit on behalf of the deceased’s mother, but the prosecution sided with the suspect due to insufficient evidence. This experimental film shows the 26 days of the deceased’s life in Korea, and is a precious work containing my 17 years of archaeological research. I hope this film will meet the audience and make the deceased’s life more widely known to the world. – Park Kyong Ju

Credits

Kyong Ju Park Director
Year of Production 2024
Salad Co., Ltd. Production company
Kyong Ju Park Producer
Lan Tran Thanh Original author
Kyong Ju Park Screenwriter
Kyong Ju Park Director of Photography
Kyong Ju Park Editor
Tri Minh Music
Lorna de Mateo Key Cast”Tran Thanh Lan”
Anima Singh Key Cast”Mother in Law”
Orona Ulranchimeg Key Cast”Husband”

Awards History

2025 Winner of the Best Women Emancipation Short Film at the London International Filmmakers Festival, London, UK

2025 Winner of the Best Experimental Film Award at the Berlin Indie Film Festival. Berlin, Germany

2025 Official Selection in the Short Film Competition at the Paris Women CineFest, Paris, France — Honorable Mention

2025 Official Selection in the Experimental Film section of the Tokyo Film and Screenplay Awards 2025, Tokyo, Japan

2025 Official selection in the VIDEOCREATION (Experimental Film) section of the 37th Girona Film Festival, Catalonia, Spain

2025 Official selection in the Experimental Film section of the Hollywood Best Indie Film Awards, Los Angeles, USA

2025 Official selection in the Short film section of the Colortape International Film Festival, Brisbane, Australia.

Movie stills

Watch the trailer