The Rose: Come Back to Me

Official Selection, 2025 Tribeca Film Festival

In this charming music documentary by Eugene Yi (Free Chol Soo Lee, Spring Showcase 2022), the curtain gets pulled back on a quartet of K-pop trainee dropouts who chart their own musical odyssey as indie-rock band success story, The Rose.

THE ROSE: COME BACK TO ME begins on the Coachella stage, an improbable climax for former street buskers who rose to overnight sensation on YouTube, developing a millions-strong global fanbase along the way. It was, as the film recounts, not an inevitable ascendance. The band of Korean and Korean American singers endured a K-pop industry trying to sculpt their image and control their rise, testing the bandmates’ loyalty to each other and the band itself. With fractured dynamics, mandatory military service, mental health struggles, and a looming lawsuit, The Rose eventually intersected with the Asian American Transparent Arts, founded by another trailblazing pop sensation, Far East Movement.

As THE ROSE gives a thrilling behind-the-scenes look at the band’s origins, rebellions, and rebirth, Eugene Yi also tells the story of musicians taking control of their own art and finding community where they can blossom. Prepare to have your bias-wrecked.

– Jeremy Aranda