Yunju You

Yunju You is a filmmaker and animator whose work focuses on diaspora, misfitting, and the gradual loss of childhood innocence. Working between film, video collage, and animation, she explores the tension between home as an imagined place of safety and nostalgia and the inevitable need to outgrow it.

Her films often depict repetitive, struggling movements within constrained frames, where bodies are caught between protection and confinement, psychologically if not physically. Recurring imagery such as fish, the ocean, and adolescents on the verge of puberty combines with themes of grief and anxiety, reflecting these states of transition. Through these experimental narratives, her work considers broader conditions of growing up, leaving, and realizing that no place is entirely separate from where one began.