D-Day, Friday (Lee Yida) Korea |

D-Day, Friday
Lee Yida
Korea. 2024. 26 min

In May 1980, the new military dictatorship in South Korea violently suppressed the pro-democracy protests in Gwangju. The crackdown led to a ten-day massacre in which thousands were killed and wounded. The massacre was kept secret in South Korea for decades and has still not been fully investigated.
The year is 1984 in Gwangju, and the enthusiasm for the professional baseball league is heating up. Eunju, a teenage girl, wants to go to a high school baseball game where the boy she has a crush on will be playing.

LEE YIDA

Born in 1997, she studied film directing at the Korea National University of Arts. Her first short film BUBBLES (2020) was screened and awarded at various Korean and international film festivals. D-DAY, FRIDAY was produced with the support of the Korean Film Council.

DIRECTOR`S NOTE

A girl has a crush on a boy on the neighborhood high school baseball team and wants nothing more than to go to his game. But her family and the whole neighborhood are too solemn about her uncle’s memorial service and about Gwangju in May as a whole. The popular song “Tears of Mokpo” and other topics related to baseball are considered taboo in Eunju’s family. Under such circumstances, Eunju is confused. ‘What do the events of that day and the memorial service for my uncle have to do with me?’ Perhaps understanding the immature discomfort of a teenager, the vision of her uncle stares silently at the night sky next to Eunju, and her aunt allows her to go to the baseball game in a calm manner, as she has been for the past four years since that day. And it is then that the audience realizes the true meaning of Eunju’s guilt: that sometimes being a bystander can be all the more shameful, because it can be understood in itself.