Hana longs for the kind of family who eat dinner together and go on fun-filled holidays. Instead, her summer vacation is spent eating alone and watching her parents constantly argue. When Hana’s attempts to mend their relationship fall on deaf ears, she befriends sisters, Yoo-mi and Yoo-jin, who themselves have grown weary of constantly moving and rarely seeing their parents. The lonely trio build a makeshift family together, finding moments of carefree summer joy missing from their own homes.

Director, Yoon Ga-eun, whose debut feature The World of Us (2016) screened at Korean Film Nights in 2019, carefully builds the children’s idealised vision of summer, finding exuberant images bursting with colour, before deconstructing them by not shying from the thornier reality. The end result is a moving ode to the adventures and precarious bonds of a childhood summer, anchored by the naturalistic and delightful performances by the three lead actors.

Josh Bullin