The Laundromat mystery

Director KIM Jungin  | Producer PARK Koonje | Korea  |97min | Delivery Date: September 2024

Project Description

Production Schedule

Synopsis

There is a small but special space in Gayang Complex 4 apartment: Laundry Chat Room. All households in the complex are too cramped even for a washing machine, so the welfare center is operating a free laundromat for its residents. Eight people including Lee Sang-don and Lee Sung-jong are indispensable to the operation of the laundromat as they volunteer there. They often said, "There is no place to retreat anymore." There must have been lots of ups and downs before coming to Gayang Complex 4 after many failures and pain. Leaving the faded heyday behind, they managed to come back to the world and started to unfold personal stories at the laundromat. "Do you need a wash? We can even clean up sorrows and regrets of your life."

Director's Note

Gayang Complex 4 Apartment, one of the largest low-income neighborhood in Korea, has a total of 1,998 households and 2,881 people. Residents call this place a GHETTO. As the proportion of residents living alone approaches 70%, it has become the area with the most “lonely deaths” in Seoul. Lonely death or solitary death are no longer strange words. The world has changed and it must be an inevitable social phenomenon in the new era, but is there any other way than watching helplessly? Here's a group that has been confined to a cramped room for a long time and barely started to come out to the world. They argue and get upset every day, but in the end, they care for each other. Through their lives, I would like to show that the only weapon against hyper-fragmented and disconnected generation lies in solidarity, coexistence, and restoration of communities.

	He pursues a film that asks questions to the audience. His previous work, A Long Way to School was the most-watched documentary in Korea in 2021 and distributed to students across the country as an educational material for improving public awareness of disability through the Ministry of Education.		He is interested in the way the story is told through a new combination of image and sound. The previous works, Some Errors of the Construction-universe and The Body of the Sea, were invited to various film festivals.
Director  KIM Jungin		Producer  PARK Koonje