Kim Bora’s House of Hummingbird is, frankly, one of the best coming-of-age dramas I’ve seen. As a story about a young girl searching for small joys among the existential horrors of being a teenager, it’s raw with harsh realities yet gentle in its depiction of them. There's honesty in this story that actually makes it a little hard to analyze just because it feels so personal (it is largely influenced by a pivotal point in Kim Bora's own life, and how do you critique that?), but that's not to say it's inaccessible—there’s too much empathy here for that.

House of Hummingbird follows Eunhee (Park Jihu) as she navigates her life as a 14-year-old girl with an unstable home life. Her sister skips school and sneaks out, her class president brother beats her regularly, and her parents don't pay any of them much mind unless they're falling back in school. Eunhee herself is a fine student, but she's not exceptional, and her classmates whisper about how she'll be working as their maid one day; but the fact is that Eunhee is artistically inclined and her interests simply lie elsewhere. Things just don’t seem to go her way given these rigid expectations that neither interest her nor give her room to flourish in her strengths.

While her everyday stressors are, of course, always present, Eunhee does have a social life that she holds very dear. She has a close friend she sees daily and even a couple fleeting romantic interests. Among all the people in her life, the adults are largely neglectful of her, until a new teacher starts at her cram school who not only notices her, but listens when she speaks. This teacher (Kim Saebyeok) is a blinding ray of light in Eunhee's life, as she encourages her to pursue her interest in drawing manhwa and instills a sense of hope that it truly will get better as long as she's true to herself—that the world is waiting for her.

This is Kim Bora's film debut, but it's got some real seasoned directorial chops. Set in 1994, House of Hummingbird has a slightly washed-out look that feels like a memory rather than appearing to be shot through a romanticized lens. The film’s pacing allows for realistic development—which does, in turn, make it a bit slow—but it stops any onslaught of hardships that might otherwise get too heavy. On top of this, each character, regardless of screentime, is framed as a real person—flawed, but not without reason. Eunhee is disappointed time and again by people close to her; she's coldly shrugged off by a friend, she sees the boy she likes with someone else, she tells her parents about her brother and they say nothing, etc. In her slightly hardened state, Eunhee may not cry, but there's hurt in her eyes and in her body language. Kim Bora searched for years for the perfect actress to portray Eunhee, and to say Park Jihu nailed it is an understatement.