When director Han Tae-ee first bought a secondhand camcorder, she had no intention of filming a documentary about her mother, Choi Mi-kyeong.

But with her mother there, right at their home, and Han's desire to find out the differences between the pair, a documentary was exactly what was made.

“It’s so strange, for me to become a person so opposite from the person who raised me, so I decided to follow her along and film her,” Han said in a recent interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily about her debut documentary film “Welcome to X-World,” which was awarded the Grand Prize in the Festival Choice competition in the 17th EBS International Documentary Film Festival.

The director admitted that she had initially wanted to “change” her mother, who raised her and her brother alone, and took care of her father-in-law for almost two decades, after her husband died more than a decade ago.

“What I thought about myself was that I was brave, free-spirited and independent, whereas my mom was softhearted, passive, and I thought she was somehow caged in her own world,” Han said. “I thought I had to impact her in some way. I tried to get her to experience new things, like doing hookah together. I wanted to show her that there’s a world with so much fun out there, and that she didn’t need to be so confined to household chores.”

When Han's grandfather suddenly asked them to move out, she was overjoyed to find a home for herself and her mom, but her mother, on the other hand, was pessimistic.

“When I was younger, and when I saw how down mom remained after hearing the news, I merely thought it had to do with financial problems,” the director said.

To her surprise, however, money wasn’t the problem. The film zooms into the mother and daughter’s journey of apartment hunting and what it means to be a family.

The following are edited excerpts of the interview.

BY LEE JAE-LIM [lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr]