How the Korean film ‘Broker’ makes room for the reality of black market baby adoptions, family-making and intergenerational justice

By Isabella Yasmin Kajiwara

On a road trip which begins with the unexpected union of a mother and two human traffickers who discover her abandoned newborn at a church ‘baby box,’ the film immediately confronts our notions of a family unit as a static, eternal, and predetermined relationship arrangement.

Heartwarm and heartbreak pulse throughout the entire story, as we become witness to the very human tendency to continuously seek and create belonging through our relationships with others, despite the scars of our pasts.

Through highlighting the reality of black market baby trafficking the film makes room for us to understand family in its more expansive, truthful sense.

Inspired by the rise of ‘drop box’ services operated by churches in South Korea and Japan for unwanted infants and the harsh reactions it evokes from the general public, director Hirokazu Kore-eda recognised an opportunity to spotlight a taboo and complex issue.

Breaking through one-dimensional flat portrayals of women who decide to give their babies away as uncaring, incapable, or selfish, Kore-eda’s Broker necessarily complicates that reality.

In conversation with the cofounders of ESEA cinema advocacy group MilkTea on the transformative nuance of Broker and the radical potential of community film screenings

How the Korean film ‘Broker’ makes room for the reality of black market baby adoptions, family-making and intergenerational justice

By Isabella Yasmin Kajiwara