A quiet Canadian suburb in the 1990s becomes the whole world for a young boy and the mother raising him alone in Riceboy Sleeps, a drama built on small, specific moments rather than big turns.
What is Riceboy Sleeps about?
So-young left Korea with her son So-yeon and nothing resembling a safety net, and the film follows the two of them as they build a life in the suburbs of Canada. Money is tight, the neighbors are not always kind, and the language and customs around them do not bend to make room. So-young works, cooks, and watches her son absorb a new country faster than she can, torn between wanting him to belong and wanting him to remember where he came from. As he grows from a boy who gets teased at school into a teenager figuring out his own identity, the film stays close to their household — the meals, the arguments, the silences — rather than reaching for melodrama. It is less about a single crisis than about the accumulation of years, and about a mother who keeps choosing her son even when the choices cost her.
About the cast
Choi Seung-yoon anchors the film as So-young, working opposite Ethan Hwang and Dohyun Noel Hwang as her son at different ages, with director Anthony Shim also appearing in the cast alongside Hunter Dillon, Jerina Son, Kang In-sung, and Choi Jong-ryul.
Context & significance
Anthony Shim directs a story rooted in the Korean-Canadian immigrant experience of the 1990s, a period setting that shapes the film's textures — the clothes, the technology, the isolation of a family without an established diaspora community around them yet. The Drama and Family genre tags fit a film that is intimate in scale, more interested in a single household than in sweeping social commentary, and it has been well received critically since its 2023 release.
Watching Riceboy Sleeps on Ktime
Riceboy Sleeps streams on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, so Farsi-speaking viewers can follow the film's quieter, dialogue-driven scenes without losing nuance. The film's page is free to browse; watching it requires only a free K-Time account login, part of a Farsi-first viewing experience built for the Iranian diaspora.