courtesy Sundance Institute
PARK CITY, Utah—Seoul Searching is an ’80s movie. Plain and simple. There’s a jock, a kind of preppy girl, a misunderstood punk, a tomboy who gets a makeover. (Though it kind of flips the script on that last one.) It’s even got binge-drinking and kids who fight with their dads. The only difference is, it’s not part of your John Hughes binge-watch weekend, but is showing at a film festival in 2015—and it takes place not in suburban Chicago, but in a camp in South Korea for kids whose families left the country after the Korean War.
Searching—the first feature solely written and directed by Benson Lee (director of documentary Planet B-Boy and its film adaptation Battle of the Year—is also based on a true story. Lee went to that camp as a kid and many of its characters and events are based on what actually happened while he was there.
“This is very much inspired by John Hughes. I’m a huge John Hughes fan, and there are certain tropes in movies that for a teen comedy, you just have to do, like the big dance at the end,” Lee says. “I wanted to respect that Hughes formula but add depth to the characters because they’re going through atypical experiences being in another country meeting disparate people from around the world.”
WIRED sat down with Lee and his cast at Sundance to talk about dressing like Madonna, boss soundtracks, and finding future stars on Facebook.
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