Debut: ‘SI’ - A Riveting Nuance Coming-Of-Age Short Film With A Feature-Length Adaption Future
Thomas Percy Kim’s short-film Si, pronounced “See,” marks the arrival of a future major filmmaker into the scene. Kim began writing the story in high school, loosely based on his and a close friend’s experiences growing up as some of the only Asian members in their colonial Massachusetts community.
The film stars Ki Hong Lee, of Maze Runner and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, as the titular protagonist—an adopted Korean-American teen navigating high school and the universal immigrant experience of feeling different than those around him because of race. Si is the only non-white member of his friend group and baseball team and is told by his friend how he’s “different” than the other Asian kid in school because of his seemingly more American-jock-type personality and interests. He uses humor to combat the microaggressions and casual racism he experiences within these social groups. After the interaction, Si and his friends are driving when they’re cut off in traffic. The rest of the scene is powerful, continuing in slow-motion, omitting any sound, and shows the group confronting and verbally assaulting the other driver, an Asian woman with her young son, at a stoplight. Si is shown participating but conflicted about the incident and, in general, what it means to fit in as a young person of color in white suburbia.
At such an early stage of his career, Kim’s refined film style for this ten-minute film is reminiscent and up to par with Greta Gerwig’s 2017 coming-of-age feature-length film Lady Bird, with themes reminiscent of Barry Jenkins’ 2016 Moonlight. His cinematography evokes a look-back-on-a-memory feeling while watching the scenes and settings. The shots of the suburban Massachusetts landscape instantly provide us, as the audience, with the white-centric atmosphere and environment the main character is engulfed in. The film is also not driven by the plot but by Si’s internal conflicts. The film visually conveys this with the character close-ups that take up most of the screen to draw closer to their emotional outlook.
Si is Kim’s first live-action project and was filmed in three “crazy” days with a cast and crew of roughly 30 people, according to the director’s Instagram. The film was shot in 2019 and screened at the Oscar-qualifying 2020 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (LAAPFF) and has received numerous awards and other screening recognitions. Shortly after, HBO purchased and distributed it on all their platforms and granted Kim the 2020 HBO APA Visionary Award.
The talented director’s next goal with the project is to adapt the short film into a feature-length film titled Isle Child, with plans on getting the project into the film festival circuit like Cannes and Sundance and picked up by film distributors like A24, IFC Films, and Neon. Isle Child is described as “a coming-of-age feature told from a new American perspective.” After Si discovers his birthmother in Korea is dying and wishes to see him, it forces him to come face-to-face with his issues of cultural and ethnic identity. The campaign is currently over 77% toward its goal.
I see Kim’s goals coming to fruition and his work receiving mainstream recognition. The short film has received such success, proving a demand for authentic diversity in films. I believe the feature film adaptation will serve as a story future critics will describe as a power staple and a story that needed to be shared when it was. A tender and achingly personal coming-of-age film that reveals the nuances of young dual identities and fitting in to not seem different and the mental toll it can take to handle.
