“Lives and souls are being protected by a secure environment created by the three adults and an orphan boy around the baby, despite the many different tormented backgrounds.” “The film shows, in an intimate way, how family can be family without blood ties,” the Ecumenical jury said in a statement. But when the child’s mother, played by Lee Ji-eun, returns, a very different story unfolds. Together with a fellow broker, played by Gang Dong-won, they initially try and sell the baby.
Kore-eda, who won Cannes’ top prize, the Palme d’Or, in 2018 for Shoplifters, makes his first foray into Korean cinema with Broker, which features Parasite star Song Kang-ho as the “broker,” a loveable rogue who pinches an infant left by a desperate mother at a Busan Family Church’s “baby box” and tries to find an alternative family for her. Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Broker, a Korean-language drama about an abandoned child, illegal baby brokers and makeshift families, has won the Ecumenical jury award for best film at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.
