After bed-ridden father died, a boy comes to live with his estranged mother. Having difficulties to adapt himself with new life, he spends time with a petty thief. One night, as the boy starts to dream about his elder brother who walks ghostly on the bank, the family secret begins to surface. The Forth Portrait is about survival. After father’s death, a school janitor who took care of the boy tries to teach him the self-respect and fight for survival but the reality covered with poverty and violence traps the boy like an inescapable prison. However, the boy is not the only prisoner. His mother who abandoned her family and his stepfather who is involved with his brother’s disappearance are also living in the prison filled with sense of guilty. Just like the boiled pot that captured the frog struggling to escape, the reality mercilessly traps the family. The film almost coldly observes their lives. (CHO Young-jung)