“Cabbage Daddy,” filmmaker Grace An’s four-minute rush of colorful, poetic whiplash premiering at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, began with a simple premise: “Why am I so bad at Korean?” An grew up around English and Korean in Toronto, Canada. Her family spoke “Konglish,” a mix o f the languages.  “I wouldn’t say I’m completely fluent (in Korean), but I can hold conversations,” An said. “There’s a certain nature to the conversations that are a bit more comfortable, and they kind of understand my broken Korean and vice-versa.” It wasn’t until she was older that An deliberately tried to improve her Korean. The process of learning resulted in funny misinterpretations, and she began making a list of Korean and English homophones.  When she’d stopped adding to the list, An knew she had the script for her next short film on her hands. The resulting “Cabbage Daddy” is a chain of vocabulary dominos. The film will show a magpie perched on a branch, add a smoking cigarette to its beak, then jump to a couple holding hands, all while repeating the similar-sounding Korean words for “magpie,” “cigarette” and “together.” Aided by the sometimes playful, sometimes sincere musical score by Oliver Lewis, the film can jump from a drawing of a hug to a childish depiction of an anus without missing a beat. Each of the film’s shots was drawn with crayon on paper, then animated with a combination of traditional techniques and digital manipulation via Photoshop. The medium creates an intentionally juvenile aesthetic meant to capture the feeling of “a confused child trying to grasp onto these very fleeting words,” An explained. An said that the production of “Cabbage Daddy” took two years, with the animation production lasting eight to nine months.  The animation was not without sacrifices, particularly of An’s fingers, which were constantly calloused as she spent night after night at her desk drawing. “I have one picture with my ring finger that’s completely busted,” she said. “My fingers were quite hideous for several months.” Animator Grace An began “Cabbage Daddy” by drawing countless cabbages with crayon. Credit: Photo courtesy of Grace An An isn’t sure how many crayons she burned through, but, just like any child, she found that she used only about a quarter of a box’s colors, while the rest went untouched. She used green the most, which is no surprise seeing that the first thing she animated was a cabbage. The film’s concept and title originated with the Korean words “napa,” a type of cabbage, and “appa,” or daddy. Although An joked that she doesn’t want to be perpetually known as “cabbage girl,” she certainly gained a greater appreciation for the leafy vegetable in the process of creating her film.  During voice recordings, Lewis, who was also the film’s sound designer, suggested crunching cabbage leaves in the studio. So, An bought a cabbage, but Lewis didn’t end up using it. With a whole cabbage on her hands, An realized it was gimjang, the season around November and December when Koreans spend time cooking kimchi.  “I was like, ‘I’m going to be a woman and start making my own kimchi to make my mother proud,’” An recalled.  An said that her parents are her harshest critics, making them the perfect sounding board when she’s representing Korean culture in film. One of An’s previous films, “Baek-il,” adapted the myth of Ungnyeo, a bear that quarantined in a cave for 100 days to become a woman.  “After that came out, I think I felt a bit uneasy being recognized as a Korean animator or filmmaker. I am Korean, but I didn’t really feel like that,” An explained. It was then that An was determined to create artwork from her perspective as a second-generation immigrant.  An said her parents loved “Baek-il.” They don’t quite understand “Cabbage Daddy.” More fluent Korean speakers have said that the film doesn’t make sense or that it was made from an English-speaking perspective, she said. “I kind of grappled with that eventually, and I realized that it doesn’t really matter,” An said. “I just came to terms with the fact that this is my subjective view of the two languages and my personal mistakes.” That perspective was hammered home by the film’s voice actors, Annette Ubinn Hong Kim and Daniel Heemang Cho. The former is a fluent speaker, while the latter is a second-generation immigrant like An, who was afraid of getting pronunciations wrong.  As for viewers who don’t speak Korean, the film is a wave of confusion, but An said that confusion is in some ways intentional. “I’m based in Montreal, and in Quebec, there’s quite charged language politics. Most people are already bilingual here, and then there’s a lot of allophone children who are growing up learning three or more languages,” An said. “Oftentimes, language can be seen as a barrier. But at the same time, approaching the struggles of learning languages can also be a unifier.” “Cabbage Daddy” will premiere as part of the Animated Short Film Program at 9 p.m. on Jan. 23 at The Yarrow Theatre. Learn more and reserve tickets at festival.sundance.org/program/film/6932fa3fb27e9da1f5e0edc7. ‘Cabbage Daddy’ in-person screenings 9 p.m., Jan. 23, The Yarrow Theatre 9:40 a.m., Jan. 24, Megaplex Redstone 2 11:30 a.m., Jan. 25, Broadway Centre Cinemas 3 4 p.m., Jan. 31, Holiday Village Cinemas 2 4:40 p.m., Feb. 1, Megaplex Redstone 2 Online 8 a.m., Jan. 29-11:55 p.m., Feb. 1 The post Sundance short film ‘Cabbage Daddy’ gets wonderfully lost in translation appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less