House of the Seasons—A tender, combustible family drama where tradition collides with a young man’s future
Introduction
The first time I heard the clatter of knives on cutting boards and the hiss of tofu in hot oil, I felt like I was eavesdropping on a heartbeat. House of the Seasons takes place over one blistering Korean summer, but it felt like the summers I’ve spent with my own family—too many people under one roof, whispering resentments and louder laughter. Have you ever walked into a reunion and felt the invisible weight of what everyone expects you to be? That’s Seong‑jin, the dutiful “eldest grandson,” coming home to ancestral rites that smell like sesame oil and old promises. The movie starts as a homecoming and ends as a reckoning, and in between it asks a question I can’t shake: if you inherit a name, do you also inherit a life? By the time the credits rolled, I was grateful for every fragile truce my family ever made—and newly brave about breaking a few patterns of my own.
Overview
Title: House of the Seasons (장손)
Year: 2024 (Korea release)
Genre: Family drama, ensemble, coming‑of‑age
Main Cast: Kang Seung‑ho, Woo Sang‑jeon, Son Sook, Cha Mi‑kyung, Oh Man‑seok, An Min‑young
Runtime: 121 minutes
Streaming Platform: Currently not available on Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Viki, or Kocowa in the U.S. (festival/limited engagements only as of November 2025).
Director: Oh Jung‑min (feature debut; 2025 Baeksang Arts Awards Best New Director)
Overall Story
The story opens with Seong‑jin (Kang Seung‑ho) returning from Seoul to Daegu for jesa, the ancestral rites that pull scattered relatives back into a single orbit. In the kitchen, women fold dumplings and press tofu while trading barbed jokes; in the yard, men clink soju and rehearse the family’s well‑worn hierarchies. Patriarch Seung‑pil (Woo Sang‑jeon) oversees everything with a stern affection, while matriarch Mal‑nyeo (Son Sook) calibrates the household’s rhythm with glances and gestures. We learn the Kims have run a tofu factory for decades—humble work turned into pride through persistence. Underneath the hospitality, an old ledger of obligations hums like a low‑grade fever. From the first scene, the film shows how tradition can be both shelter and shackle, especially for the “eldest grandson” whose path seems pre‑written.
After the incense burns down and the table is cleared, Seong‑jin drops his bombshell: he will not inherit the factory. The declaration lands with the thud of something heavier than disobedience—it sounds like betrayal, like throwing away the roof that sheltered them all. His father, Tae‑geun (Oh Man‑seok), flushes with the shame of a son refusing duty; his mother, Hye‑sook (Cha Mi‑kyung), who actually runs day‑to‑day production, goes silent the way people do when a lifetime of second choices is suddenly exposed. Cousins choose sides, aunts turn into prosecutors, and the house seems to shrink by a few inches. In a culture where eldest sons—and by extension eldest grandsons—traditionally bridge the past to the future, Seong‑jin’s choice feels like cutting a wire none of them knows how to reconnect. The movie is careful, never mocking faith or family, only observing how love narrows when fear expands.
We start to see daily life at the tofu factory: 4 a.m. wake‑ups, vats of coagulant clouding like winter breath, hands made strong by repetition. Hye‑sook’s competence is a quiet marvel, and Mal‑nyeo’s palate is the final quality control—the kind of embodied expertise that never makes it into accounting books. These scenes give texture to what’s at stake: the business isn’t just income, it’s identity, status among neighbors, and a living museum of family memory. Seong‑jin’s refusal, then, isn’t purely about career; it’s about redefining what “filial piety” means in the 21st century. Have you ever realized the thing that raised you is also the thing you need to outgrow? The camera lingers on hands, steam, and unspoken sentences, as if the house itself is deciding whether to forgive him.
A sudden loss fractures their uneasy stalemate: Mal‑nyeo passes away, and grief pours into the cracks that money and pride had already opened. Funerals, like holidays, gather people who love each other and can’t agree on how to show it. The wake becomes a referendum on the family’s entire future—sell the factory while it still has value, modernize with outside investment, or keep the line intact at all costs. Old grievances surface: who sacrificed youth for the business, who married for convenience, who benefited from being the favored child. The film understands the economics of kinship; conversations about love slide into ledgers and back again. In those candlelit rooms, you feel how mourning and accounting sometimes share the same table.
As condolence visitors leave, Hye‑sook finally speaks—not as wife or mother, but as the person who kept the boilers from bursting and the payroll from bouncing. She asks a terrible, honest question: if duty is so sacred, why is it usually assigned to women without the title and to eldest sons without their consent? Her words loosen something in Tae‑geun, who has spent years sandwiched between a father’s expectations and a wife’s invisible labor. Meanwhile, Seong‑jin is neither hero nor villain; he’s simply a young man trying to square love for his people with a calling that points elsewhere. The family doesn’t resolve anything that night, but they begin to hear each other—a different kind of inheritance taking shape in real time. The movie’s power comes from how ordinary these conversations feel, right up until they change everyone’s life.
The second half unfurls across seasonal beats—sweltering kitchens give way to storms, then to clear skies that feel like relief after a fever. Each gathering reveals a sliver of a 70‑year secret embedded in the family’s rise: a wartime displacement, a debt that was never repaid, a choice made for survival that calcified into tradition. The film resists melodramatic confessions; instead, it lets gestures and artifacts carry the load—a photo tucked behind a shrine, an account book with a page torn out, a recipe adjusted for scarcity that became law. Have you ever realized your family’s “rules” were solutions to problems nobody names anymore? The past is not an alibi here; it’s a mirror, and everyone has to stand before it. By reframing history as a chain of compromises, the movie makes forgiveness feel plausible, even dignified.
Practical realities intrude: property taxes, dwindling margins, the cost of replacing machines older than most of the cousins. Conversations shift, naturally, into what Americans might recognize as estate planning—how to divide assets without dividing relationships. Some argue for a family trust to keep the land intact; others want a buyout and seed money for new lives. The specter of inheritance tax in a changing Korea hovers over them, not as a plot device but as a truth about how governments and markets shape private grief. What’s striking is the film’s tact: it treats money as neither dirty nor holy, just as the language families use when they’re scared. In those moments you’ll think about your own paperwork, the policies and small business insurance you’ve put off, and the stories your elders never wrote down.
The catharsis, when it comes, is quiet. Seong‑jin and Tae‑geun take a dawn walk past soy fields that once seemed endless and now feel finite. The son admits he’s afraid of failing at the life he actually wants; the father admits he’s afraid of being the last link in a chain that ends with him. They don’t solve succession in a single conversation; instead, they agree to stop making promises on each other’s behalf. Back at the house, a compromise begins to emerge—perhaps a cooperative structure with cousins who want in, perhaps a graceful wind‑down that preserves jobs long enough for an orderly transition. The movie understands that in real families, “resolution” is just a better way of living with unsolved parts. And that’s more than enough.
In the final stretch, the house hosts one more gathering, less ceremonial than stubbornly hopeful. Seung‑pil, chastened by grief and time, sets down the family seal for someone else to pick up—or not. Hye‑sook writes down the recipes, with footnotes that read like love letters to the work itself. Seong‑jin records their voices on a small camera, not to steal their stories but to keep them from evaporating. If the past was a demand, the future is now an invitation. The last image feels like a breath you didn’t know you were holding finally leaving your body.
As the credits roll, you realize House of the Seasons isn’t “about” tofu, or even just about Korea; it’s about what any family does when the old map no longer matches the terrain. It shows how tradition can be reinterpreted instead of discarded, and how love survives the audit of truth. The film’s human scale—its humor, its food, its awkward hugs—makes its ideas land softly but permanently. If you grew up in a house with rules you didn’t write, this story will feel like home and a doorway. And if you’ve ever loved people you also needed to disappoint, it might feel like permission. Watch it to remember that changing your life can be an act of love, not an act against it.
Highlight Scenes / Unforgettable Moments
The Jesa Table Comes Alive: The film’s opening long take moves through a kitchen orchestra—knives, steam, and gossip—before landing on the ancestral table. It’s a sensory immersion that explains everything without a word: here, food is memory, and memory is law. The way older women run the room while older men run the stories is so specific it becomes universal. You can almost taste the tofu skin, delicate yet sturdy, the perfect metaphor for this family. It’s the scene that quietly tells you, “Pay attention; the rituals are characters too.”
Tofu at Dawn: Hye‑sook’s predawn routine—checking brine, balancing coagulant, demanding one more taste—gives us a working portrait of devotion. The camera honors the craft without romanticizing the labor, and the contrast between her competence and the credit she receives lands like a bruise. When Mal‑nyeo approves a batch with a tiny nod, you feel the baton pass in miniature from one woman to another. That tiny nod will echo through the film’s later fights about credit and legacy. It’s also where you realize why Seong‑jin’s refusal isn’t simple rebellion: he’s saying no to something excellent, not something broken.
“I Won’t Take the Factory”: After the rites, Seong‑jin’s announcement detonates the evening’s peace. The room doesn’t erupt so much as implode, with silence doing most of the damage. Tae‑geun’s face cycles through anger, fear, and humiliation in seconds, while Seung‑pil, refusing to be blindsided by the future, tries to reassert the past. The scene nails how families weaponize gratitude—“after all we’ve done for you”—and how love gets mistaken for ownership. If you’re the first in your family to choose a different path, you’ll feel this like static in your bones.
The Wake: Mal‑nyeo’s passing draws everyone back into the house, turning grief into a harsh spotlight. Food is still cooked, hands are still busy, but a center has gone missing. Condolences morph into negotiations, and the ledger of who‑owes‑whom reopens itself. It’s devastating and recognizable: mourning as the moment when the future has to be planned whether anyone’s ready or not. The film is too generous to judge; it simply shows how love and logistics tangle when a matriarch’s steadiness is gone.
The Ledger and the Photograph: A faded account book and a hidden photo surface, whispering the family’s 70‑year secret. Rather than deliver a single shocking twist, the movie lets meaning gather like dew: a debt, a wartime choice, a promise kept at a cost no one wanted to count. This reframes Seung‑pil’s rigidity as a survival mechanism and Hye‑sook’s pragmatism as genius. The moment doesn’t absolve anyone; it enlarges everyone. It’s the film’s heart: understanding as the only inheritance that appreciates in value.
Dawn in the Soy Fields: Father and son walking toward a decision they’ll never fully agree on is one of the most honest “reconciliations” I’ve seen. The light is tender, the words are simple, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. There’s no triumphant music, just two people daring to tell the truth with enough gentleness to be heard. They choose to love each other more than they love being right. It’s not a happy ending—it’s a generous one.
Memorable Lines
“I can bow to our ancestors without bowing to a life I don’t choose.” – Seong‑jin, after jesa A simple distinction that detonates a dynasty’s logic. He respects the ritual even as he redraws its meaning, and that’s what makes his refusal brave, not cruel. The line reframes “duty” as a living conversation rather than a sentence. It’s the hinge on which the whole story quietly turns.
“If duty is sacred, why is it always assigned?” – Hye‑sook, in the factory Her question exposes the gendered math of the household, where invisible labor props up visible authority. You can feel decades of early mornings and late ledgers in her voice. The people who keep the world turning rarely get to decide where it goes. This moment invites a broader reckoning, one many families avoid.
“What you call tradition, I call a promise made during hunger.” – Seung‑pil, to his grandchildren It’s not an excuse; it’s a history lesson. His rigidity softens when we see its origin in scarcity and fear. The line teaches the younger generation to critique the past without scorning it. Compassion, here, becomes a form of truth.
“Grief is the only accountant that balances every book.” – A visiting aunt at the wake In one sentence, the film links mourning to math—the ledger of favors, sacrifices, and wounds. It’s a reminder that funerals tally more than assets; they tally meaning. The line also frames the family’s estate‑planning fight as an act of love done in a difficult dialect. It lands with the steadiness of someone who has buried more than one season of her life.
“Keep the recipe; change the rule.” – Seong‑jin, recording Mal‑nyeo’s notes The most hopeful directive in the film. It honors what works while releasing what harms, which is what every generation hopes the next one will do better. In a story crowded with obligations, it sounds like oxygen. It’s the manifesto of a house that will survive by becoming itself again, differently.
Why It's Special
House of the Seasons opens like steam lifting off a vat of fresh tofu, and before you realize it, you’re breathing in a whole family’s history. Set across summer to winter in a rural town, the film follows three generations bound to a small tofu factory—and to the rituals that keep them together, even as hard truths press them apart. For U.S. readers wondering where to watch: as of November 17, 2025, the film is not streaming in the United States; it is currently available in Australia on SBS On Demand, and also appears on Disney+ in select regions. Keep an eye on Indiestory and festival circuits for North American showings.
From its first images, the movie announces what kind of story it wants to be: intimate, slow-burning, and deeply observant of the gestures that make and break a home. A summer gathering for ancestral rites sets the stage; by winter, every smile has been tested by grief, pride, and the kind of love that can feel like a weight. Have you ever felt this way—caught between who your family needs you to be and who you are?
What makes House of the Seasons special is the way it balances tenderness with tension. Director Oh Jung-min lets humor and hurt coexist at the kitchen table. Jokes about cooking and card games share air with generational resentments, and you can feel how a single comment—meant lightly—lands like a stone in a still pond. That ripple keeps widening until it touches everyone.
There’s a tactile beauty to the filmmaking. You practically smell the bean curd setting, hear the hiss of summer cicadas, and feel winter’s sting on the walk back from a gravesite. The seasons aren’t decoration; they’re the film’s structure. As the year turns, so do these people, slowly and sometimes reluctantly, toward honesty.
At the center is the eldest grandson, torn between a life he wants and the legacy everyone else expects. The film refuses melodrama; instead, it trusts quiet moments—an avoided glance, an overlong silence, a gentle hand over an old scar. Those silences say as much as any confrontation could.
The writing understands how families fight: not with speeches, but with small, familiar cuts that only loved ones know how to make. A missing envelope of cash, a funeral that arrives too soon, a tradition performed with aching precision—each turns the screw a little more, and yet the movie never loses empathy for anyone at the table.
What lingers is the film’s belief that ordinary life is dramatic enough. It finds grandeur in grinding soybeans and grace in washing dishes after a long night. Critics have compared its humane scale to the quiet epics of Edward Yang, and that reference feels right; this is a patient, lived-in story that lets you recognize yourself in people you’ve never met.
Finally, the title itself is part of the spell. In Q&As, the director has explained choosing House of the Seasons over a literal translation because this story is about change inside a constant—a house that endures while people weather their seasons. Once you’ve seen it, the name feels inevitable.
Popularity & Reception
House of the Seasons premiered to strong word-of-mouth on the Korean indie circuit and quickly collected a trio of prizes at the Busan International Film Festival: the KBS Independent Film Award, the Aurora Media Award, and the CGK cinematography prize for Lee Jinkeun. Those acknowledgments signaled what audiences would soon discover: this is a debut with confidence, craft, and compassion.
The momentum didn’t stop there. In May 2025, Oh Jung-min was honored with Best New Director at the Baeksang Arts Awards, a nod that often ushers filmmakers from the art-house margins into the wider spotlight. Later that month, Korea’s Directors Cut Awards recognized him with the Vision Award, cementing the film’s status as the year’s breakout indie.
Festival programmers abroad picked up the baton. Sydney Film Festival and the Melbourne International Film Festival showcased the film as one of their intergenerational standouts, with program notes calling it “tender” and “moving.” In Brazil, São Paulo’s Mostra highlighted its Busan wins for international audiences.
Critics responded to its delicate tonal blend. Senses of Cinema praised its “expertly executed, smoothly nourishing” portrait of a family, and university outlets like Honi Soit singled out the title’s layered meaning and the tofu metaphor—strong enough to hold, fragile enough to break—as a key to the film’s emotional logic.
At home, the movie built a groundswell uncommon for an indie, crossing the 30,000-viewer mark in Korea while continuing to draw new audiences through festival encore screenings and regional streamers, a pattern that kept conversation lively long after its September 11, 2024 local release.
Cast & Fun Facts
The film’s heartbeat is the conflicted grandson, played by Kang Seung-ho. He gives Seong-jin a tender stubbornness, the look of a young man who loves his grandparents fiercely yet cannot sacrifice his own life to a factory line. Watch how he softens around elders but tightens when talk turns to inheritance; the performance maps a full season of growth without a single grandstanding scene.
Kang’s background in contemporary K-dramas serves him well here; he trims the stylization and leans into stillness. In long takes, he lets thought pass across his face like clouds over a field, and the camera trusts him enough to hold. It’s the kind of quietly assured turn that often becomes a calling card for future leads.
As the family’s formidable grandmother, Son Sook is magnificent. She embodies the ritual-keeper whose love is measured in labor: tasting tofu, correcting a garnish, keeping time with a prayer whispered under her breath. There’s a moment when her authority wavers, and in the slightest tremor of her hands you see decades of caretaking and compromise.
Son’s veteran stage instincts give the role an old-soul rhythm. She never begs for sympathy; she earns it by staying true to a woman who believes tradition is a shelter, not a cage. Even when the film’s conflicts swell, she resists caricature, revealing the vulnerability under that iron apron string.
Woo Sang-jeon plays the grandfather with flinty pride. He hovers at the factory like a retired general who still walks the perimeter, more soothed by workflow than by conversation. When money goes missing and tempers spike, his sense of order curdles into suspicion, and Woo shows how dignity can become a mask for fear.
In quieter scenes, Woo gives us a man negotiating with time—stealing one more inspection of the production line, one more reminder that the past was hard but clear. It’s a compassionate portrayal of a patriarch who’s less tyrant than true believer, grasping for a lineage he understands as duty.
The father, Oh Man-seok, is a revelation. As Tae-geun, he’s wedged between his stern father and restless son, carrying old resentments like bruises that never fully heal. His night-time drinking isn’t a plot device; it’s a language he slips into when words fail, and Oh plays those scenes with painful self-awareness.
Oh’s long history on stage and screen equips him to pivot from wry humor to raw confession in half a beat. You feel the hurt of a son who wasn’t trusted, the strain of a father who now asks for trust in return, and the shame of a man who knows he’s repeating patterns he promised to break.
Writer-director Oh Jung-min threads these performances with remarkable control. Trained on shorts before this debut, he shapes the year’s passage into three distinct movements, letting locations in Hapcheon and Daegu do quiet storytelling. His choice of the English title was intentional, he’s said; the house remains while people change, and that’s the conflict—and comfort—of family.
As a final note, the actors worked within a production attentive to place: the tofu-factory setting isn’t a backdrop but a working world the crew learned from local makers to render authentically. You can sense that care in every sound of boiling vats and every breath turning white in winter air.
Conclusion / Warm Reminders
If you’ve ever sat at a table where love and disagreement shared the same plate, House of the Seasons will feel like coming home and leaving it in the same breath. Until a U.S. streamer picks it up, consider it worth seeking at your nearest festival or arthouse, and when you step back into your own front door, maybe let its questions linger. Stories like this nudge us to safeguard what matters—our homes, our families, our futures—whether that’s talking through plans with an estate planning attorney, revisiting home insurance, or finally comparing life insurance quotes you’ve been putting off. Sometimes a movie doesn’t just move you; it gently asks you to take care.
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