HIS love for children prompted him to make a movie for them. He travelled thousands of miles to bring this movie to the 20th edition of the Cairo Children's Film Festival, which ended on Thursday. Having completed his last three movies, How to keep my love, Oollalla Sisters, and Legend of Gingko, Jae-Hyun Park, a 40-year-old Korean cinema director and a scriptwriter, decided to enter the world of children's cinema. He says his film You & You is his first for children, but would not be the last. "I feel very happy to take part in the Cairo Children's Film Festival for the first time in my life," he said. "The needs of children either in Korea or in Egypt are the same. They all need protection and love," he told The Gazette in an interview. In his 97-minute movie, Jae-Hyun wants to deliver the simple message that children have the right to find love and tenderness from society. Jae-Hyun imparts this message through the story of a girl who only wants to sing, but comes against the hard wall of her mother's opposition. "Parents shouldn't force their children to do things they don't like," he said. "They must let them think freely and creatively," he added. This is Jae-Hyun's first to Egypt. He says he finds this Arab Middle Eastern country "very impressive". But Jae-Hyun was surprised to find the similarities between his native Korea and Egypt abound. For him, both countries showcase identical cultures, arts, and intimacy of relations that makes itself scarce everywhere else. Speaking few English words and depending on a translator to make words understood, Jae-Hyun says cinema can do a lot to usher in a better future for the children of the world. "We sing in the movie to make the voices of afflicted segments like the orphans, and the victims of violence, ignorance, hunger and disease heard," he said. You & You was warmly acclaimed in Korea before it came to the Cairo Children's Film Festival. Sitting at their seats in the nation's cinemas and theatres, audiences laughed and cried as they saw movie characters act and sing. When it came here, the movie drew almost the same reaction. It was screened last week at the open theatre inside the Egyptian Opera House. What makes Jae-Hyun's movie more interesting is that it is produced by Korea's Children Choir, an association founded in the wake of the Korean War in1960 to offer help to orphans and widows left abandoned after the war. The choir was established with the purpose of telling international audiences about the sorrowful stories of the innocent victims of the war. It seeks to give hope to the scarred orphans through the songs it offers.
