In the Philippines, women get deployed abroad to work as domestic workers or nannies, often leaving their own children behind to throw themselves into the unknown. In a local filipino training center dedicated to domestic work, a group of trainees are getting ready to face both homesickness and the abuses that they will possibly endure. Through role playing exercises, they assume both the roles of the employee and that of the employer. An observational documentary, bordering on fiction, that brings to light the question of modern servitude in a globalized world, as well as the determination these women find to face the ordeals that await them.
“Yoon’s painterly framing often sets the camera at a remove from the action, as though filming a theatrical production, a distancing that both underlines the isolation of the subjects and dignifies them by highlighting their performative aspects.”
Thomas Flew / Sight and Sound
“Overseas is a harrowing story of resilience, an elegy of people pushed to the margins, whom Yoon restitutes as dignified and strong-willed fighters, in a work that dances between reality and fiction to an engrossing extent.”
Leonardo Goi / The Film Stage