The Epoch Times’ sister media company NTD’s mini-drama “Dream of the Zelkova Tree” won the Best Screenplay award at the LA Webfest, the world’s largest web series film festival.
NTD’s original content “Dream of the Zelkova Tree” won the Best Screenplay award at the LA Webfest, held in Hollywood on May 3 (local time). It beat 11 other nominees, including the American web series “A Witness to Aloha.”
In addition to Best Screenplay, “Dream of the Zelkova Tree” was also nominated in three other categories: Best Music, Best Short Film, and Best Performance-Short Film.
“It is very meaningful to win Best Screenplay for the film, which is a warm family story about the conflict, understanding and love between a mother and her daughter,” said Jang Yubin, a producer at Epoch Media Korea, who was responsible for planning and producing the film.
“South Korea has undergone rapid changes in the past few decades, so there is a huge gap in thinking and a sharp conflict between generations. On the other hand, I think Korean culture has the strength and warmth of family to smooth over and solve these problems. We tried to integrate that into the drama,” she explained.
“The idyllic scenery of a southern county called Hapcheon in South Korea played an important role in the production of the film, which is set in 1994,” she said, adding, “In particular, the 500-year-old zelkova tree in the county brought completeness to the story and symbolized the ’mother' in the film.”
“Dream of the Zelkova Tree” is a heartwarming film based on a time-traveling story about a carefree daughter who is a typical member of what Koreans call the “MZ generation” (Millenials + Gen Z). She realizes the importance of family when she travels back in time to meet a very much younger version of her mother. The film was supported by the local government of Hapcheon, part of Gyeongnam Province, South Korea. It is available on the streaming platform Epoch TV.
Meanwhile, LA Webfest, which began in 2009 and is now in its 15th year, is a web series festival based in Los Angeles, California. It was one of the first web series festivals in the world.
