(Honorable Mention)
Original Film Title: Welcome to Vegas
Director’s Name: Hae Sun Hong
Writer’s Name: Hae Sun Hong
Producer: Peter Jin Bae
Country of Origin: United States
Country of Filming: United States
Language: English, Korean
Runtime: 1 hour 21 minutes 40 seconds
Film Description:
Raised behind the steam of her mother’s humble soondae-guk restaurant in Korea, Sunny is a daughter of a single mother who dreams of escaping generational poverty.
She sees a wealthy boyfriend as her way out—but when she becomes pregnant, he disappears.
Refusing to abort, Sunny carries the child and the shame alone.
And so, the cycle continues: a single mother raises another.
Rejected by Korean society, she migrates to Las Vegas, hoping for reinvention.
Instead, she finds herself dealing cards at a casino while her son Jonah, caught in the margins of American life, falls into gang violence and is imprisoned for ten years.
When he returns, burdened by guilt, Jonah sets his sights on a high-stakes poker tournament—hoping to rebuild not just their finances, but their fractured bond.
Welcome To Vegas is the debut feature of Korean-American diaspora female director Hae Sun Hong.
It is a meditation on identity, survival, and intergenerational trauma—set between the pressure cookers of Korean tradition and the neon illusions of the American West.
Through poetic realism and raw emotion, the film reclaims the meaning of family, home, and heritage—on both sides of the Pacific.
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