This screening is followed by a Q&A with film producer Gary Byung-Seok Kam.

When the passenger ferry MV Sewol sank off the coast of South Korea in 2014, over three hundred people lost their lives, most of them schoolchildren. Years later, the victims’ families and survivors are still demanding justice from national authorities.

Oscar-nominated short film In the Absence combines intimate interviews with victims’ families, survivors, and rescue divers with carefully-picked archival footage and audio recordings obtained from the South Korean authorities. The result is a compelling and compassionate story of the people whose lives were deeply affected by this tragedy.