Liquor Store Dreams

When director So Yun Um turns the cameras on herself, her father, and all
the other “liquor store babies,” we are gifted with an intimate depiction of
an underseen immigrant story. Part of a generation of Koreans who owned 75% of the liquor stores in Los Angeles in the late ‘80s, Um always recognized that it takes hard work and long hours, which may have led to her own filmmaking dreams. But to understand her father’s story, and by extension her own, she will have to address evolving perspectives on social justice caused by bruising life experiences during the 1992 LA riots and the Black Lives Matter protests of 2021. This touching, captivating, and extremely relevant intergenerational story attempts to reconcile Um’s feelings about being a second-generation Korean immigrant and liquor store baby against the choices and sacrifices her father made.