SYNOPSIS
Is it ‘rule breaking’ for Korean society to encourage childbirth while leaving childcare to individuals? Is it ‘rule breaking’ for a family where the father works low-wage irregular jobs and serves as a stay-at-home dad to four children? To resist Korean society's rule breaking, this stay-at-home father of four decides to become the so-called "Rule Breaker."
REVIEW
This is the story of Monkey, a stay-at-home dad raising four children. His days revolve around sending his wife off to work, getting the kids to school, grocery shopping, and preparing meals—a rhythm familiar to any full-time homemaker. What sets him apart is his boundless energy and wholehearted embrace of the role: he cooks with a baby strapped to his back, skateboards to the store, and tackles errands with playful ease.
On the surface, the film is an upbeat portrait of a man who has inverted traditional gender roles, celebrating the idea of “rule breaking.” Yet in doing so, it also draws attention to the unspoken rules still deeply embedded in society. The family’s lifestyle—having four children, living on a single income, raising them without private tutoring, and staying rooted in a local community—may seem idyllic, yet it has become increasingly rare in today’s world. Monkey and his wife Anna’s family is at once alternative and ordinary, unconventional yet everyday. In this sense, The Rule Breaker captures a quiet form of rebellion.
Its most radical gesture, however, lies in its form. Composed entirely of footage Monkey shot himself, the film is neither an intimate intrusion by an outsider nor a self-conscious autobiographical work. Instead, it deftly assembles his Instagram videos into a cohesive, unexpectedly observational documentary. In doing so, it opens a fresh and inventive space where contemporary personal media and documentary cinema meet.
DIRECTOR'S NOTE
The Rule Breaker follows a stay-at-home father raising four children on a single income, using his story as an ironic lens to examine the deep-seated problems of modern Korean society. In an era of demographic collapse, this "outlier" family quietly defies the nation's plummeting birthrate. More than an intimate family chronicle, their story becomes a survival narrative reflecting a country grappling with among the world's highest suicide rates and lowest fertility rates.
CONTACT
스튜디오 그레인풀
filmdocu@naver.com
