Matthew J Koshmrl

LAND OF MY FATHER

Korea Republic of , 2020., 75′

A Korean farmer protests the Japanese government in Tokyo over its claims of the disputed island territory of Dokdo after he finds out his father was abducted and enslaved in a coal mine during the Japanese occupation of Korea. A Korean woman who lived on Dokdo with her father struggles to keep his legacy alive after the Korean government mysteriously erased their history of being pioneering residents. Set in the unresolved trauma of the Japanese occupation of Korea, Land of My Father is a story about two individual’s lives that are intertwined with a remote disputed island.

Matthew J Koshmrl

Filmmaker, cinematographer, and professor based out of Minnesota. He has been the cinematographer on documentary films that have played at International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Documenta Madrid, and True/False Film Festival. Matthew personally focuses on cinema-vérité documentary films that explore the evolution of tradition, individual and national identity, and unseen processes. His most recent project is the feature film, Land of My Father, which explores the evolution of generational trauma in Korea caused by the Japanese occupation.