Interview With James Choi, Director Of “Before The Call”

Does serving in a country’s military act as proof that you are part of that country’s culture? That’s the question facing Jinwoo, the protagonist of James Choi’s drama “Before The Call.” Choi’s film screens as just one of the offerings at this year’s S.F. Independent Film Festival.

For those who haven’t yet seen Choi’s film, its premise can be easily described. The South Korean public is concerned about increasing tensions with North Korea as well as foreign entanglements. In the midst of this crisis, Korean-American Jinwoo has returned to Seoul to join the South Korean military. Why?

Broke-Ass Stuart (hereafter “BAS”) asked some questions of Choi (hereafter “JC”) about his film’s themes via e-mail. The BAS questions are in bold, JC’s responses are in regular type. The text has been lightly edited for readability.

BAS:  Why did you decide to shoot your film in a variation of “run and gun” style?  That is, film what you needed and leave before the authorities came along to shut you down?

JC:  We weren’t really afraid of the authorities shutting us down.  Korea is pretty indie-friendly, and we approached things respectfully.  From a practical standpoint, we had a 7-day shoot with a micro-budget, so time was crucial [and] it was important to stay nimble and light.  But beyond budget and time constraints, I genuinely love working with small crews in real locations.  It creates urgency and unpredictability.  I like working on that edge where it feels like you’re on the precipice of inspiration and disaster, because the city is alive and the film can breathe in real time.

BAS:  Your film opens with shots of Jinwoo literally dwarfed by the Seoul landscape.  How does his desire to enlist connect to these images?  Is it a desire for personal agency, for example?

JC:  Seoul is huge, indifferent, always moving.  Jinwoo is just a speck inside it, and that’s the feeling I wanted in the opening.  It’s less a literal introduction than a peek into his subconscious.  The first image is Jinwoo running up the Seoul City Wall, which was built to protect Joseon’s capital, still wrapping around the city like an old boundary you can’t quite escape.  The wall stands in for the human urge to build something, to climb toward something, because we believe it will finally deliver peace and belonging.  But when Jinwoo reaches the top, he doesn’t get clarity.  He gets blur.  It’s like a recurring dream where your “destiny” keeps pulling you forward even when your deeper self is trying to tell you to stop.  Enlistment becomes that paradox.  Agency on the surface, but underneath the hunger to be accepted is doing more of the driving than he wants to admit.

BAS:  If you were to ask Jinwoo what sort of cause he’d consider to be worth dying for, what would he answer and why?

JC:  I’m not sure he even knows, and honestly most of us probably don’t know until we’re truly tested.  Hypotheticals are easy, reality is different.  He’d probably say something like “family” or “protecting people,” because that’s what makes sense and it’s not a lie.  But emotionally, I think the answer is more complicated.  He thinks he’s willing to die for meaning, for the chance to feel real in a place where he feels like an asterisk.  He doesn't want to be heroic, he simply wants to find purpose and belonging.

BAS:  Jinwoo’s travels through Seoul give a sense of emotional distance rather than the comfort of visiting favorite haunts.  Does he have any physical spaces (if any) outside of his father’s home where he can feel emotionally connected?  Why that space?

JC:  Not many, and that emotional distance is intentional.  The city isn’t a warm homecoming for him.  It’s a place he’s trying to re-enter.  Seoul exists for him partly as memory and nostalgia, and those memories are unreliable, skewed by time and longing.  His father’s home is probably the closest thing that feels familiar, even if it’s also cold and unresolved.

BAS:  “Before The Call” doesn’t spell out the motivation for your protagonist’s action.  It doesn’t seem to be the higher callings of altruism or patriotism.  Nor is it something base like selfishness or egotism.  What other possibilities are there beyond trying to impress his veteran father?

JC:  During the writing, two conflicts were dominating the background noise: Gaza and Ukraine.  I kept circling the same question: what actually motivates someone to enlist and go fight a war?  The usual answers (higher calling, altruism, and patriotism) started to feel less like truth and more like language culture hands you, often shaped by people in power.  And even when patriotism is sincere, it can slide into shame, obligation, and the pressure to prove you belong.  So Jinwoo’s motivation lies in that messier territory.  Belonging is part of it, but in the specific way an immigrant kid understands belonging: the feeling of being slightly unfinished, like there’s still business left in the place you came from.  There’s also a desire for structure, maybe even a degree of self-punishment.  And underneath all of it is fear of living an unclaimed life, fear that he’ll drift forever without choosing something that feels real.

BAS:  Speaking of father and son, your film leaves in broad strokes or implications the relationship between Jinwoo and his parents.  It seems his parents divorced or separated, with Jinwoo being taken to America for a number of formative years.  Yet even with the distance, how close was the connection between father and son?

JC:  Not emotionally close in the warm communicative sense, but still deeply bound by family history.  Their connection is built out of fragments.  Duty, silence, memory, a few charged moments, and the gravitational pull of everything that never got said.  They’re not strangers, but they also don’t have the kind of intimacy where you can lay your life on the table.  The distance is real.  The attachment is real too.  In a way, that’s a familiar immigrant-family dynamic, especially when a child grows up between cultures and the parent never fully integrates into the world the child is living in.

BAS:  How does Jinwoo’s openly affectionate relationship with his cat Sonny affect the way Jinwoo’s father sees him?  Does the older man think his son is less masculine for displaying such affection?

JC:  Sonny is less about the father judging Jinwoo and more about the father being confronted by something he didn’t give his own son.  Yes, he could read Jinwoo’s affection as softness through a traditional masculinity lens, but what matters more is that it moves him in a way he doesn’t have language for.  Sonny becomes a mirror.  Jinwoo’s tenderness makes the father feel the distance between them, and it quietly exposes what he couldn’t offer when Jinwoo was younger.

BAS:  The specifics of Jinwoo’s life in America doesn’t get discussed much in the film.  Yet I can’t help thinking about how American culture generally doesn’t ascribe masculine qualities to Asian men.  What role, if any, did this phenomenon play in Jinwoo’s decision to enlist?

JC:  I don’t think that played a meaningful role for Jinwoo.  If anything, it’s just background noise.  Jinwoo isn’t enlisting to “prove masculinity” to America.  He’s trying to resolve something internal: belonging, family gravity, and the need for structure and meaning at a moment when he feels unmoored.

BAS:  Jinwoo’s friendship with Minji comes off as comparably more intimate than his other relationships.  Yet Minji’s rebelling in her way against Korea’s restrictive traditions while Jinwoo has essentially chosen to embrace them.  What do you think Jinwoo emotionally wants from Minji?

JC:  Absolutely.  There’s a kind of intimacy he’s seeking with Minji.  It’s acceptance, and maybe even a kind of forgiveness for leaving.  He’s testing the waters with her, almost looking for permission to be himself without having to explain or perform.  With Minji, intimacy isn’t something he earns by proving anything, it’s something he’s simply allowed to have.  And even though she’s rebelling against tradition while he’s walking straight into it, he wants her to see the human reason underneath his choice, not just the politics of it.

BAS:  How would you describe Minji’s feelings about Jinwoo’s decision to enlist?  Does she personally disapprove of that decision yet is empathetic about the reasons for his action?

JC:  I think she’s conflicted because she wants closeness with him as well.  She disapproves of the institution and the way it manufactures duty, but she also understands the human impulse underneath it: the desire to help, to matter, to belong.  She understands the cage, even if she’s trying to pick the lock in a different way.  So her feelings live in that messy space of frustration, fear, tenderness, maybe even admiration for his attempt to do the right thing.  Until the question becomes painfully personal: what is actually worth dying for when the cost is someone you love?

(“Before The Call” is available for streaming through February 15, 2026. Go here to order a ticket.)