‘Pilgrims’: Korean SF animation utopia that chooses to fall short
What would it take to walk away from a world without grief, illness or heartbreak — and is that kind of paradise even worth staying in? “Pilgrims,” the new Korean animated feature adapted from Kim Cho-yeop’s widely translated short story of the same title, poses that disquieting question. The film centers around a group of young adults who abandon a meticulously utopian planet where pain and sorrow have been engineered out of existence for a flawed and wounded Earth and confront the emotional and ethical costs of a life without suffering. In recent years, Korean SF, particularly by female writers like Kim, has been increasingly recognized for centering questions of care, otherness and the limits of progress. Rather than racing toward distant galaxies or celebrating technological conquests, these works dwell on relationship, fragile bodies and ethical ambiguities of “improvement,” in quiet contrast to the long-dominant strain of Western mainstream SF. The film arrives with substantial anticipation against that backdrop. Kim’s “If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light,” whic
