Anthony Shim's award-winning BC film Riceboy Sleeps opens wide March 17

As the Vancouver filmmaker told Stir last fall, the affecting mother-son story explores two generations’ experiences of cultural challenges

By Janet Smith

Riceboy Sleeps.

Riceboy Sleeps opens March 17 at Fifth Avenue Cinemas

IF YOU MISSED the affecting, Lower Mainland-set Riceboy Sleeps at VIFF (where it won a best Canadian film prize) last fall, the movie by Vancouver filmmaker Anthony Shim is finally getting its wide release.

It also has some new awards to its name, including the Vancouver Critics’ Circle top BC film and director prize; the Palm Springs International Film Festival Young Cineastes Award, grand jury and audience favourite at Seattle Asian American Film Festival,

The movie tells the moving story of a Korean mother struggling to raise a son alone in Canada. Shim, who wrote and directed the beautifully shot work, shows how external hardships can strain a mother’s relationship with her child, but also reinforce their bond. In the movie, So-young has been forced to leave Korea after having a baby out of wedlock and the death of Dong-hyun’s biological father. But in Canada, she lives an isolated existence, between factory work and trying to raise a son who’s having trouble fitting in—both of them constantly confronting the subtle and not-so-subtle racism that pervades 1990s suburbia, where the film is set. South Korea’s Choi Seung-yoon employs moving restraint in her revelatory performance as the strong and stoic mother

“The main thing that I was really wanting to explore was generational trauma and undealt-with grief, showing that these two people from two different generations are dealing with the same immediate challenges as immigrants—the cultural and racial challenges,” Shim told Stir last fall, during VIFFr. “How are they able to navigate that all? Ultimately they are really dealing with the same issues.”

Though much of the film was shot here, it builds to a return to South Korea—centering on a home that, incredibly, dates back 13 generations in Shim’s family.

Riceboy Sleeps speaks affectingly to the immigrant experience, but ends up being moving no matter where you come from, as a highly relatable mother-son story.  

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