Review

Riceboy Sleeps (2022)

Written and directed by Anthony Shim; with Dohyun Noel Hwang, Ethan Hwang, and Choi Seung-yoon.

Set (mostly) in 1990s Vancouver, a Korean single mother raises her young son, determined to provide a better life for him than the one she left behind.

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Reviewed by CS
Posted May 21, 2026

Riceboy Sleeps, the second feature from Anthony Shim, explores Korean-Canadian identity through the bond between mother and son. The movie examines bullying, parenthood, and the unseen sacrifices that shape the immigrant experience. Anchored by beautifully-textured 16mm cinematography and kitchen-sink dialogue delivered in unhurried takes, Riceboy Sleeps derives its emotional weight from the immersive on-screen world it creates.

Premiering at Toronto International Film Festival in 2022, the movie won the Platform Prize for high artistic merit and strong directorial vision. It went on to collect numerous festival awards in Canada and abroad, and was nominated for six Canadian Screen Awards, winning Best Original Screenplay for Shim.

Early in the movie, six-year-old Dong-Hyun, played by Dohyun Noel Hwang, sprints across the schoolyard on his first day of grade one, evading capture. Close behind is his single mother, So-Young, played by Choi Seung-yoon. The year is 1990.

Hwang is well cast as a vulnerable outsider in the Vancouver public-school system. His too-large glasses and timid demeanour project a young child desiring acceptance from his Canadian peers. One sequence in particular — of Dong-Hyun enduring aggressive teasing before dumping his Korean lunch in a bathroom garbage — should tug at viewers’ heartstrings.

Seung-yoon grounds the movie with an exceptional performance as the disowned matriarch So-young. The details of her past are stated in the opening shots, but the movie begins with So-young in Canada. She is brash, defiant, and strict, yet radiates an unwavering love for her child. We feel for So-Young as she endures menial labour and workplace sexual harassment while carrying the full weight of her household.

Shim often forgoes cutting during dialogue scenes, lingering on a single subject for entire conversations. This places added emphasis on performance, allowing both spoken words and silent reactions to resonate. Seung-yoon rises to the challenge, imbuing small, intimate moments with significant emotional weight. In a scene where she prepares kimchi on the kitchen floor, her physical exhaustion is palpable, yet so too is her quiet resolve to keep pushing ahead simply because there is no other choice.

So-Young’s beat-up sedan and modest employment establish a family of limited means. Curiously, however, their rented home appears palatial by present-day Vancouver standards and — barring unexplained circumstances — still well out of reach for a lower-income single mother in 1990. This oddity is the exception: a piece of mise en scène that feels incongruous to the world the movie has created. In Anthony Shim’s defense, he is hardly the first Director to place his characters in housing beyond their means.

The story jumps ahead nine years, and Dong-Hyun is now a teenager, played by Ethan Hwang. No longer an outcast, and having traded his oversized glasses for contact lenses, he blends easily into adolescent Canadian life. At this point, the immigrant experiences of mother and son begin to diverge: he is a West Coast teenager with a local accent and upward mobility, while she remains a labourer with only an intermediate command of English.

In Dong-Hyun’s quieter moments with his mother, an unresolved longing emerges — his desire to understand both his Korean heritage and the father he has never known. Here, Shim allows the audience to know more than the character. From the opening moments, we learn that So-Young is an orphan who moved through foster care in rural China before relocating to the city at eighteen, where she conceived Dong-Hyun. Not long after, her lover’s mental health deteriorated, and he died by suicide.

Dong-Hyun presses his mother for details about their past, only to be stubbornly rebuffed. These moments of conflict are both powerful and frustrating, offering a messy, authentic portrayal of the parent / teenager relationship. His dependence on her for stability contrasts sharply with his growing need for independence and self-understanding.

As their lives grow more complicated, So-Young enters a period of self-reflection and proposes a trip to meet Dong-Hyun’s paternal grandparents. They travel to Korea, where he meets his uncle and grandfather — two surrogate father figures who leave an immediate and lasting impression. Set against the lush Korean countryside, these sequences deepen our understanding of the family’s history and So-Young’s sacrifices.

On a technical level, the movie employs a 4:3 aspect ratio for its Canadian scenes, evoking both a nostalgic 1990s aesthetic and a sense of intimacy — almost claustrophobia — that mirrors the characters’ constrained lives. In contrast, the Korean sequences expand to 16:9, allowing the countryside’s scale to register fully and reflecting its transformative impact on both Dong-Hyun and So-Young.

So who is this movie for, really?

Korean Canadians, particularly those with first-generation immigrant experience, will find much to connect with in Riceboy Sleeps, though its appeal extends well beyond the diaspora. Shim handles the mother / child relationship with remarkable care, giving the movie a universal emotional resonance. Viewers willing to engage with its quiet, deliberate pacing will be rewarded with a deeply affecting work that deserves a place within the canon of important Canadian cinema.