Treeless Mountain

2008 ‘나무없는 산’ Directed by So Yong Kim

In Seoul, Korea, two sisters must look after each other when their mother leaves them to search for their estranged father.

Kim Mi-hyang Kim Hee-yeon Kim Seong-hee Lee Soo-ah

89 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by seohyun choi ★★★★

A slow placed film with beautiful story telling. As the camera continues to move, you get the feeling that you're actually looking into the characters real lives, rather than watching a movie. The child performances are excellent and very realistic. A very pure and lovely film that perfectly captures the innocence and wondrous nature of childhood that remains even in the most difficult circumstances when resilience is present.
Review by Travis Wagner ★★★★★ 3

This film manages to be narratively complex, cinematically awe-inspiring and genuinely quite profound, all while keeping to a brisk 89 minutes. This film demands immediate and wholly engaged viewing.
Review by Ally Bae ★★★★★

This is just the kind of film I love to watch in the early morning while I try to wake up and drink my tea. Treeless Mountain is a quiet, beautiful shot film that focuses on two sisters adapting to life with the sudden abandonment by their mother. Besides being adorable, the two young actresses do an outstanding job. The eldest sister, Jin, is full of silent pride and seems to take her mother's abscence much harder than the younger, Bin. Jin was told to take care of her younger sibling, but at times that role is switched. Both sisters are shown supporting the other, holding on deperately to the hope that their mother will return, even when lies are revealed and harsh truths met.
Wonderfully heartfelt. A gorgeous slice of life film. Quiet. If you like that sot of thing, watch it. I can see how this would bore a lot of people.
Not me :D
Review by ‮محمد‬ ★★★★½

ما ادري ايش هي التعويذة السحرية اللي تحطها سو يونغ كيم على الاطفال اللي يمثلوا بأفلامها وتخليهم كانهم اطفال عايشين حياة حقيقية مو يمثلوا فلم. علاقة الاخوات الصغيرات بالفلم شي ساحر فعلًا وذكروني كثير بأطفال اختي الصغار.
فلم جميل واقعي ومؤلم عن اسلوب الطفل وطريقة تكيفه وتحمله للمشاق الصعبة في مرحلة كان من المفترض ان تكون ابسط واجمل ايام حياته.
Review by scoppola ★★★★½ 1

So Yong Kim portrays a beautifully unsentimental portrayal of a childhood lost. Proving yet again how South Korean directors are rocking the world of cinema right now.
These performances were very raw and personal and was dealt with quite a bit of respect for the young girls who had no prior acting experiences. The actresses (both 5 and 7 years of age respectively) portrayed emotion and feelings so incredibly well considering they are at an age where typically kids can’t particularly recognize emotion. So Yong Kim is incredibly gifted to have gotten these performances out of these young talents.
A beautiful slow-pace film about a childhood lost. A grimly realistic coming of age tale that narrates the lives of two…
Review by anko 2

my main takeaway from this is that jin is tohru and bin is kanna from kobayashi-san chi no maidragon. oh yeah, i'm also depressed.
Review by SupremeLemon ★★★

Mumblecore dramas about isolated or abandoned youths tend to end up as monotonous exercises in aggressive misery, all typically captured in claustrophobic close-ups of their protagonists that tightly frame their day-to-day struggles, most of which follow the most generic formulas of characters coming to terms with their loss of innocence or abandonment. Fortunately, Treeless Mountain is a more sophisticated case, a sensitive drama that provides a portrait of considerable sincerity that illustrates the harshness and wonders of growing up, all while delicately balancing these two substantially emotional forces in harmony. The film gives both the audience and its characters the time and space demanded to become attuned to the rhythms and textures of everyday life - the interlaced sequences of…
Review by MrJago ★★★½ 2

Made me want to try grasshoppers :-)
Very touching, the kids are fantastic.
Review by xan ★★★★

watching children navigate the world by themselves without agency or advisory is genuinely the most heartbreaking thing to watch
Review by Rosalind ★★★½

There seem to be several East Asian films about single mothers who leave their children with relatives while they find work, I'm thinking particularly of my South Korean choice from March Around the World 2015 The Way Home but there's also something similar about Nobody Knows. It makes me wonder about how unemployment and homelessness for families is represented differently across the world. Maybe it's just that in the UK it's less common for people to move for work.
In any case, the two girls in Treeless Mountain are left with their alcoholic aunt while their mother tries to find work. Their mum tells Jin and Bin that their aunt will give them a coin every time they do what…
Review by JW Achitoff ★★★½

Much like So Yong Kim's subsequent film For Ellen, which I thought was a likable enough slice-of-life drama that nonetheless essentially felt like a second-hand riff on Olivier Assayas' inarguably superior Clean, Treeless Mountain is a good film with an unavoidable similarity to Hirokazu Koreeda's Nobody Knows, another story of young, resourceful children abandoned by their mother. Fortunately for Kim, Koreeda is a less formidable talent than Assayas, and she manages to hold her own here just fine, delivering another of the quietly impressive, small-scale naturalistic dramas that she's made her name on (beginning with 2006's In Between Days, still her most impressive film). She may not be an earth-shattering talent, but Kim consistently makes modest, well-observed, quietly poignant films…
Review by angel ★★★★★

it’s 8pm on a monday and i guess i’m going to just sit here tearing up over a piggy bank

Recent reviews

Review by LamLingus

The rhythm of uncertainty becomes clearer over time.
There is immense comfort in finding the ones you can depend on and those who find they can depend on you.
Planting a dead branch on pile of rock is a testament to the resiliency of a young and gentle soul.
Review by Warren Chu ★★★½

the kids are so sweet and all the close-ups make you feel like you’re looking in on their lives. a really touching film
Review by Isabella ★★★

This is a quiet and beautiful slice of life movie - reminded me a lot of Koreeda, especially Nobody Knows which still haunts me from time to time
Review by Tarryn-tino ★★★½

I was concerned Treeless Mountain was going to make me feel utter despair, but luckily I only felt a bit sad.
What resourceful young girls - never fails to baffle me how SK produces so many amazing young actors.
Not bad.
Review by Rangr ★★★★

An amazing Korean film that reminded me of Nobody Knows by Kore eda.
Review by Risya Citra

Memberi rasa pilu tanpa menyakiti.
Ngenes liat adiknya plus pengen 'mites' si ibuk, kok tega banget ama kedua putrinya.
Tidak ada yang salah sama cerita maupun akting para cast, tapi 'Feel' Film-nya kurang aja.
Review by Neil Steffens ★★★½

(Filmspotting Year-End Top 10 - Matty's #7 of 2009, no in-depth review but mentioned in the 2009 Annual Top 10 episode, Filmspotting #285)
I admire so much about this film. The stylistic choice to keep close-ups on the two kids really puts us in their world - its nobody else's world. We get cursory details on their situation but its about as much information a child can process. Their surroundings are filled with adventure, futility, opportunity - its a world that is completely realized.
There's also a lot of information conveyed through the opening ten minutes that beautifully sets up these two kids' relationship and their maturity levels. One would think the older girl would be the rock and protector…
Review by blablera ★★★

I didn't cry but I surely felt for them. amazing performance by the two little girls
Review by lucy ★★★★★

it was sad from the start but then they introduced the grandma and suddenly i couldn’t stop crying
Review by Mikito Ramirez ★★★★

What lovely little film. Quiet, moving and lushly photographed. The child actors are excellent, giving nuanced and naturalistic performances.
Review by bagelking666 ★★★★

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

some of the best child acting i have ever seen! a beautiful story that, while being fairly predictable, manages to really stick the landing with the girls' decision to use the money they saved in the piggy bank to buy their grandmother new shoes. real props to the camera work as well, does a really good job of making the audience see the world through the childrens' eyes.
Review by cwerner ★★★★

Absolutely mesmerizing performances by the two child actors whose journey from city to small town to rural Korea holds the film together. On one level, not much happens, but the images of the Korean sky are haunting andI found myself wondering again and again how on earth director So Yang Kim managed to film in close frame throughout without any apparent awareness of the girls that they're being filmed.