Between Goodbyes

BETWEEN GOODBYES is an intimate and insightful documentary centred around Mieke, a queer Korean adoptee raised in the Netherlands, and her birth mother Okgyun who was forced to give her up under South Korea’s harsh one-child policy and the pressures of social stigma and financial hardship. Six years after her emotional reunion with her birth mother, Mieke returns to Seoul with her wife to celebrate their marriage—an occasion filled with joy and shadowed by decades of separation. As they navigate love, loss, and cultural gaps, mother and daughter confront the lasting impacts of international adoption.

In a heartfelt and deeply personal directorial debut, director Jota Mun, a Korean adoptee herself, expands the adoptee documentary far beyond the drama of initial reunion. BETWEEN GOODBYES tenderly explores the enduring individual journeys of reconciliation, identity, and belonging for adoptees, as well as the decades-spanning historic legacy of South Korea’s international adoption program which saw over 200,000 children sent abroad between 1950 and 2020.