In the 1990s, a young widow named So-young (Choi Seung-yoon) moves from South Korea to Canada with her young son, Dong-hyun (Dohyun Noel Hwang). Neither of them speaks English very well or understands the cultures of their new home. But this is where they live now, where Dong-hyun will grow up, and they’ll make the best of it.

Vancouver director Anthony Shim distinguishes himself as a storyteller of piercing honesty and remarkable specificity, unpacking the lives of So-young and Dong-hyun over a decade of change and adaptation. (Dong-hyun is played as a teen by Ethan Hwang.)

Riceboy Sleeps lays out its interwoven stories simply, shifting between the different perspectives of its protagonists. Poignantly capturing Dong-hyun’s loneliness and frustration alongside So-young’s isolation and sacrifices, Shim keeps the film compassionate and poetic

As to why it is called Riceboy Sleeps – In the Q&A session at Red Sea International Film Festival, the director said, in response to the reason for choosing the name of the movie, that he always listens to music while writing his films, at that time he was listening to an album called “Riceboy Sleeps” by Jon Thor Birgisson, which prompted him to use it as a placeholder title, but the title stuck and became the definite title.