Happy New Year from all of us here at Dragonframe! As we all look to, and even make changes towards the new, our pick this week is a piece about our past. JEOM deals with our inception and the inescapable truths about ourselves that may simply be immovable. The English translation of JEOM means “black dot” or “birthmark.” For this film, JEOM is also a metaphor on the powerful hereditary force that each of us receives without our consent before we are even born.

The filmmakers Kangmin Kim and Open the Portal studio describe the film’s subject this way, “It is inevitable that we are all tied to this heredity. No matter how much we try to erase or change this fact, our ancestors will always live through us.” What unfolds visually in the short film takes the idea (and form) of that birthmark through a heredity “journey,”–through the real human struggle to erase the things we inherit but are truly inescapable.