‹ Back

Fragmented Lives: Kim Sung-Yoon’s Stark Debut Examines Grief, Guilt, and Growing Up Too Soon

By: Professor Horror

Playing at Fantasia Film Festival 2025 after its earlier debut at the Busan International Film Festival, FRAGMENT marks a quietly devastating feature debut from South Korean filmmaker Kim Sung-Yoon. Known for his work as assistant director on The Vanished and Kim Ji-young: Born 1982, Kim brings that sobering sensibility to a story less about crime itself and more about what’s left behind after the yellow police tape is taken down and the prison bars slam shut. The film centers on the lingering horror endured by those left behind, exploring how grief, shame, and loss come to permeate every aspect of their lives.

                                                   

Shot with stark minimalism and a subdued color palette, FRAGMENT follows two middle school boys linked by one violent event. Jun-Gang (Oh Ja-Hun) is barely holding life together. With his father imprisoned and his mother gone, he’s left to raise his younger sister, Jun-Hui, while juggling school and scraping by at home. Across town, Gi-Su (Moon Seong-Hyun) self-isolates in a house that is too big and too silent, where he lashes out at the only relatives left in his life. You see, his parents were murdered…and Jun-Gang’s father is the one who killed them. Both boys are roughly 13 to 15, but childhood is already a thing of the past. Kim presents them not just as kids affected by tragedy, but as collateral damage in a society too unsure of how to care for what comes after. If a murder leaves two people dead, FRAGMENT asks us to look harder at those left behind, those held responsible, and the ones stuck between.

                                                    

As the two boys’ paths cross, Gi-Su, unable to hurt the man who ruined his life, decides to go after Jun-Gang instead. But this is not a revenge thriller in any conventional sense. Kim’s screenplay wisely avoids courtroom melodrama or investigative tropes. Instead, the film lingers in the emotional aftershocks as we witness the bullying Jun-Gang endures, the way Jun-Hui’s friend is told not to play with her anymore, and the landlord’s cold pity disguised as kindness. Everyone in town knows about the crime and the boys’ connection to it, but no one knows how to help, which makes guilt feel like something contagious.

                                                    

Oh Ja-Hun’s performance as Jun-Gang is a standout, as he captures the quiet panic of a boy too burdened for his age. There’s a raw honesty to his scenes, especially those shared with his younger sister, (played with startling naturalism by Kim Kyu-Na). One particular moment, when Jun-Hui realizes a friend has been warned away from her, is heartbreaking in its subtlety and proof that Kim knows how to mine pain without spectacle. But it is in Moon Seong-Hyun as Gi-Su that we see the most emotionally explosive role. Often shouting, angry, and volatile, his performance occasionally edges toward monotony, but he’s given enough reflective beats to balance it out. One of the few moments he smiles, (when reuniting with an old friend) lands all the harder because of the film’s cold emotional climate.

                                                     

FRAGMENT succeeds not just because it tells a compelling story, but because it reframes who gets to be considered a victim. Gi-Su may have lost his parents, but Jun-Gang has lost his future as he is socially marked by his father’s crime and emotionally devastated by inherited guilt. And I particularly like how Kim refuses to center the adult narrative in the film. We never see flashbacks to the crime and the story never dives into the father’s motivations. This is the boys’ story, and the camera never forgets that. Ultimately, FRAGMENT isn’t about vengeance or redemption. It’s about what happens when children are forced to carry the weight of adult sins, and how even in shared pain, reconciliation might remain just out of reach. Hitting us with a quiet stunner, Kim Sung-Yoon’s debut suggests a filmmaker to watch, and a story that lingers like wounds that never fully fade.