The Lost Year

Every Sunday, Hanna takes her young son Jacob to visit his grandmother Ok-hi on the outskirts of Vienna. »Oma«, Jacob cries in German as soon as the door opens, then »ŏm-ma«, Mama in Korean, and runs toward her. Jacob thinks »ŏm-ma« means »Oma«, and Hanna corrects him. And yet, Korean stopped being her mother tongue a long time ago, sometimes it’s individual words she can’t find, other times it’s whole sentences – and Ok-hi barely speaks German. Their relationship, meanwhile, is equaly shaky. When Hanna was ten years old, Ok-hi left Hanna with a neighbour, so that she could go and care for her ailing husband, Hanna’s father. Before Jacob was born, Hanna rarely thought about this time, but since becoming a mother herself, she has found it increasingly difficult to understand Ok-hi’s decision. And when Ok-hi asks Hanna to accompany her to South Korea to help to relocate her husband’s grave to Vienna, that old wound is broken open once more.

The Lost Year is a story of losses – of a mother, a language – and of the grief that comes out of this. But also of the desire for reconciliation and the reassuring realisation that a mother tongue can be reinvented, full of tenderness and love.