When I think of TIFF, I don't usually go running for the documentaries. It's nothing against the genre, but the bigger name projects always caught my eye. I mean, I was ready for Hamnet or the Best and Worst of Times. I wanted to go catch the stars at the screenings; I was like a dog frothing at the mouth for the bigger bone.
It's a curse, I swear. TIFF happens every year, and like clockwork, I have managed to miss every single one of them. This year, too, I was back in Toronto but due to scheduling conflicts, there was no way I could make it to a showing.
That is, until fate intervened.
By some miracle, an evening opened up. I didn't hesitate for an instant; I carpe diem-ed it. I called my friend and we made the hour trek downtown, past all the red carpets being unrolled and the absurd amount of security crawling the streets, to the box office where we begged the lady to get us into any screening.
She was a saint, really. She printed us two tickets right then and there and told us to return in an hour for the show.
I joked, "Imagine us getting tickets to the most depressing movie."
I should have known then, when the ticket lady didn't smile that maybe this was, in fact, a sad movie. But it didn't click. Not as my friend and I giggled our way into the theatre. We had no idea what we were in for. Not until the lights dimmed and the speaker came up on stage solemnly to tell us about the two on-call therapists who were standing by the door just in case the film triggered anyone. At that point, our laughter finally died. I elbowed my friend, to ask her to search up exactly what we were watching, but it was too late. The film began.
Sometimes it's worth having your heart broken.
There Are No Words is a documentary about the director, Min Sook Lee's, life years after losing her mother to suicide. In the wake of COVID, Min Sook sets out to interview her father to uncover a few pieces to the puzzle that was her mother. From domestic violence, undiagnosed mental health issues, to language and war, this documentary explores how everything is tangled, somehow inextricable from one another, the same way Min Sook is with her past. The story is about grief, about reconciling with a history that is riddled with trauma and abuse, about rediscovering who her mother was, and attempting to find herself amidst all the pieces.
The best way I can describe Min Sook Lee's style is poetic; she is a literary master, an artistic genius in the way that she examines and explores her story through cinematography and narration. Her film is ethereal, embedded with her mother's spirit. Her voice, too, as she narrates, is both monotonous and poetic, which somehow auditorially drenches each and every scene with her grief.
It's not just narration, though; the incorporation of songs, prayers, and even silence evokes a sense of haunting that carries over to the audience. The very first scene, for instance, takes place during a shaman ceremony. It's hard to hear over the drumbeats and wailing, but very quickly, the film pulls us into Min Sook's head; the shaman sings about what her mother feels and somehow it is clear that this purgatory is where Min Sook resides.
Right off the bat, Min Sook tells us what There Are No Words is supposed to be. It's not simply a documentary pertaining to her history. Rather, it is a form of truth-telling, of healing, and remembering:
“Silence and shame followed my mother’s suicide. I realized that if I didn’t make this film, a default narrative would take over that amounted to a permanent death of who she was and could have been. I used this documentary to give life back to both of us.” - Min Sook
That is what Min Sook did; she created a film that pulsated with her mother's presence. Although the film follows a standard interview format, through mixed visual media, sound, and cinematography, Min Sook Lee is able to step over conventions and create a piece that is entirely her own. Every shot, every photograph, every word is intentional. I forgot, at times, that this was a documentary and that Min Sook was interviewing her father. The stories felt real despite their unreliability; Min Sook's internal reflections and strifes took over the narrative, as she grappled with who her father was, and the parts of her mother she was never able to see.
Why I Think You Need To Go Get Your Heart Broken
To be honest, this movie wasn't the first on my list, but it should have been. This movie resonated with me in ways I didn't expect; even now, a part of me feels emotionally tethered to the space of grieving, healing, and spirituality that Min Sook brought forward. What stands out about There Are No Words is that it reads as a poem of sorts, a promise for softness and forgiveness despite the wounds that have torn through skin. It is Min Sook's grief but it is also ours, all of those who have gone through generational trauma, who've parented or caretaken abusive parents, who've lost parts of themselves to history.
A line that stuck with me was when Min Sook described language as a muscle that held her family together. I felt that this metaphor was vital to understanding the gap in her memory, in her relationship with her parents, and her identity. Equipped only with broken Korean, the remnants of her past, Min Sook hires a translator to help her communicate with her father. The translator becomes a marker of that block, that crutch to help bridge the dead nerves between father and daughter. It goes both ways; the film highlights the broken English that the father, later the uncle, and aunt, tries to speak in order to connect with Min Sook, and these moments where they struggle to find the right term, where they break off the conversation to define a term they haven't heard of before, works as an artistic tool that recreates the walls and barriers preventing Min Sook from being able to connect with that part of her life.
Learning about her father helps her understand how political and social influences of her father's upbringing led to her own unstable childhood. It is also the compounding events that ultimately led to her mother's suicide. These revelations create a complex and nuanced image of history, identity, and family that enables Min Sook to return to the moment where everything changed on her own terms, in a way this time that forefronts her mother's narrative.
She Showed Me Love Through Her Silence
I think Min Sook Lee might be my hero. She is intentionally vulnerable and self-aware in a way that allows the context of her story to extend beyond her body. Her experience isn't just about her, it is a demonstration of how environment can alter our understanding of right and wrong. Through her father, she shows how violence trickles down from external environments into familial relations. She shows how language can be misunderstood and reshaped according to context, to the pictures, to the eyes that witness them.
Min Sook wanted to reinstate her mother's voice; she wanted to take her mother out of the margins and place her in the center of her story before it could be forgotten, and through her artistic capabilities, that is exactly what she did. Where her father spoke, Min Sook ensured her mother was there, witnessing, speaking her own truths. We see this in the way Min Sook pieces her father's story to create an image of her mother she never knew. We see this in the way she uses photography, documents, including her mother's death certificate, and sound to continuously remind us of her mother's presence.
This documentary is a love letter, an attempt at closure, a transfusion of one story to another. It is her mother's voice, her mother's strength, through Min Sook.
Her Story Awaits You
I have an aversion to crying in public, theatres included. My bestie, bless her heart, was an unabashed pool of tears almost fifteen minutes in while I held onto my composure like my life depended on it. Yet, by the half-hour mark, my face was drenched, my soul fragmented and body hallowed as I followed Min Sook on her journey to rediscovering and rebridging a relationship with her late mom.
I know that my friend felt it. This was a story we were all familiar with in some shape or form.
So, if you're ever sad that you won't catch the big stars on the red carpet, don't be. There are much larger stars waiting to be seen. Go watch their stories. I promise you won't regret it. There Are No Words has haunted me ever since I saw it. I hope it does the same for you.
Works Cited:
https://www.canada.ca/en/national-film-board/news/2025/08/world-premiere-of-min-sook-lees-powerful-nfb-feature-doc-there-are-no-words-at-tiff.html
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