THE RETURN New Auteurs

Karoline — a woman raised in Denmark by adoptive parents — travels to South Korea seeking more information about her birth mother. She takes up residence at KoRoot, a real-life guesthouse in Seoul for transnational adoptees. It’s there that the formal daring and seamless blend of documentary and fiction in Malene Choi’s debut feature take root. Choi populates her film with both actors and non-actors, and crafts Karoline’s story out of material from her own biography. She weaves several emotional accounts of this frustrating, intense and sometimes rewarding journey from real people into the narrative framework, as Karoline struggles through the process herself. With adventurous editing that thrillingly shifts between moving naturalism and experimentation, Choi announces herself as a powerful artist. – Mike Dougherty