It is no coincidence that the Busan International Film Festival flaunted a political montage this year, among the rubble of fallen empires, worldwide revolutions in the name of freedom and nuclear-born tensions. And it is no coincidence that these films were once again epiphanous with the same historical motifs that have been at the heart of human storytelling since its dawn. But there is something different each year ― and that is, that we are brought into new parts of ourselves and given new eyes for seeing the same time-worn problems.

International film festivals uniquely allow an array of different cultures a similar stage and medium to portray the world, to tell a story as they see it. They remind us that the big world rarely fits together neatly with our near-sighted, proximal assumptions. The omnipresent tension between North and South Korea beckons criticism of faraway places every day. People across the world associate North Korea with words such as “crazy,” “strange” and “misunderstood,” as they have with communism during the Cold War and Islam in the past decade. Not many have had the ability to see such situations through the eyes of the faraway others- as this struggle is refreshingly depicted through the eyes of the creators of “Poongsan.” Ultimately, the conflict is garnered by power relations between both countries’ elite, and those simple humans with hollow voices that reside in their territories are the ones who suffer their actions. They are those whose stories cannot reach us ― they are the 99 percent.

We’ve heard of the terrors that powerful figures have done to their people this year, from Hussein to Gadhafi, Mubarak to Wall Street. But the problem is that we only see these problems from afar, across the seas of magazines and news wires. I have begun to feel the distance that borders put between us, our causes, and our parallel lives. People are coming together to tell their stories now, and it just so happens that many of them have the same stories to tell: stories of lost jobs, oppression, and failing to reconcile the promises of their leaders with the reality in which they find themselves. I have a feeling we will hear more of their stories in the near future. People will find a way to reach out and find others, to show each other that there are other ways of making life work on this vast terrain we share. As government overthrows and liberation from tyranny in Africa spread from one ear to the next, others have realized that they, too, have both the ability and the right to live differently.

I have been reminded in the recent days of the history of travel and its importance in the lives of our people. I think of martyrs who traversed oceans and deserts in search of freedom, the manifest pursuit westward into the terra incognita, and the passions of illegal modern day immigrants in pursuit of something their birthplace denied them. Simply trekking a few kilometers on this tiny planet can open up a completely different world ― one with different bedtimes and flavors of ice cream; with different blood types and birth rights.

It is vital that we share our stories, that we have an exchange of culture as well as currency in the midst of the cultural collisions of globalization. We build our stories as we do our lives, and in some places the two entangle and create each other. And so I think film, unlike anything else, allows us to tap into hidden parts of ourselves, into potential lives, betrayals, acts of violence, losses, and choices we’ve never had to make. Movies help to open us up to see more clearly and more worldly, and to embrace people and acts that are so far beyond our contingent lives.

Until I see that starving boy in India, or that abused girl in Thailand, I can’t truly feel empathy for them, or widen my arms beyond my own city limits to embrace or to understand their condition. Until I see on-screen ― the unseen struggles, and that the only outlets for mobility, or at least the only ones they know, are the ones for the jagged souls ― I cannot understand that my clean way of viewing the world, my condemnation, and my black-and-white moral imperatives don’t apply to the brutal things they are about to do to survive and protect their loved ones in a lawless world. In the darkness of the theater we often wipe the slate clean and become less certain, pseudo-versions of ourselves. Though we awaken to overhead lights and safely exit the movie theater to continue our normal lives, hopefully, something in us has changed.

By Joshua Matthew Nezam

Joshua Matthew Nezam, a graduate of the University of Missouri, currently teaches English at an elementary school in Busan. ― Ed.