Lettuce seeds from an elderly neighbor take root in a city planter, growing across generations. This sight evokes memories: the neighbor’s yard, her cat, the sound of her footsteps, and her hands, which, like a village craftsperson, cared for all surrounding life. A physical pain that began back then brings a new awareness of the body's inner entanglements and the invisible ripples left by the world’s countless grandmothers.

The film opens with a close-up of fingernails being clipped. The clippings resemble lettuce seeds. Over this image, the voices of a grandmother and the director overlap—she asks how her grandmother has been, and the reply follows. The two are then brought together visually: the grandmother’s yard and the director’s apartment balcony, juxtaposed as if in quiet conversation. While the film’s subjects are ostensibly the grandmother and her lettuce, it unfolds in many layers, like lettuce with its many layers.

Director Seol Suan, who has long documented native seeds, turns her lens to Osebong lettuce—named after Osebong, the grandmother who has cultivated it for decades. This is not supermarket produce, but a living thing nurtured by care, soil, and weather, carrying a deeply human story. The grandmother recalls tending the seeds her own mother gave her upon marriage, a ritual that keeps her connected to the past. These seeds, passed from one generation to the next, now rest in the director’s hands, linking the grandmother’s story with her own. Alongside this, she scatters fragments of her life into the film—words from a piano lesson, moments of bodily pain—like seeds sown in a garden. “More important than strengthening weak fingers is learning to loosen the strong ones,” she was once told. The film, too, loosens its grip, and in doing so, finds its quiet strength.

Outwardly calm and measured, the work hums with the inner sound and movement of transformation, carrying the quiet vitality of a seed becoming lettuce. At once the grandmother’s story, the story of a seed, and the story of the filmmaker herself, A House with Two Yards becomes a gentle yet profound meditation on the everyday labor of sustaining life.

The lives of women in domestic labor rarely follow a clear arc of triumph or tragedy. Without a single defining event, their stories are often erased from the record. Yet, like smoke or water, they seep into the very fabric of a community. This film seeks to make those quiet histories visible, giving form to the countless lives that have sustained the world from the shadows.

• Producer설수안 SEOL Suan
• Cinematography 이희섭 LEE Heeseop 설수안 SEOL Suan
• Edit 설수안 SEOL Suan
• Sound 표용수 PYO Yongsoo
• Music 유지완 YOO Jiwan 김오키 KIM Oki
• Cast 오세봉 OH Sebong