Kim Seong-hun (filmmaker)

Kim Seong-hun
Kim Seong-hun in 2019
Born	February 20, 1971 Gangneung, Gangwon Province, South Korea
Alma mater	Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
Occupation(s)	Film director, television director, screenwriter
Years active	2003–present
Korean name
Hangul	김성훈
Hanja	金成勳
Revised Romanization	Gim Seong-hun
McCune–Reischauer	Kim Sŏng-hun

Kim Seong-hun (born February 20, 1971) is a South Korean film and television director. He directed How the Lack of Love Affects Two Men (2006), A Hard Day (2014), the sexually-explicit One Summer Night (2016) and Kingdom (2019–).

Career

Kim Seong-hun began his filmmaking career as an assistant director on the romantic comedies Oh! Happy Day (2003; starring Jang Na-ra and Park Jung-chul) and He Was Cool (2004; starring Jeong Da-bin and Song Seung-heon).

In 2006, he directed his first feature film How the Lack of Love Affects Two Men, which follows a widower and his son who both fall for and fight over their new basement tenant (played by Baek Yoon-sik, Bong Tae-gyu and Lee Hye-young). It was a critical and commercial failure, and it would take eight years before he could get his sophomore film funded. Kim said, "It was so embarrassing to realize that was all I could do. [...] I had the firm resolve to give myself one more try before I die."

Inspired by Pedro Almodóvar's Volver, Kim began writing a new screenplay in 2008, finished its first draft in 2009, and continued to edit it until 2013 when filming finally went underway. He cast Lee Sun-kyun as the antihero and Cho Jin-woong as his antagonist in a black comedy/thriller about a corrupt homicide detective who hides the body of a hit-and-run victim in his mother's coffin only to find himself terrorized by a mysterious yet formidable blackmailer. A Hard Day (the Korean title translates to "Take It to the End") premiered in the Directors' Fortnight sidebar of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival where it drew unanimously positive reviews, with Variety praising Kim for "handling a taut yet elaborately plotted narrative with poise, control and near-faultless technical execution." Domestically, A Hard Day had a lackluster opening but strong word of mouth propelled it to becoming a box office hit, with more than 3.4 million tickets sold. The film received numerous awards and nominations, and Kim won Best Director at the 51st Grand Bell Awards, the 1st Korean Film Producers Association Awards, the 6th KOFRA Film Awards, the 20th Chunsa Film Art Awards and 51st Baeksang Arts Awards, as well as Best Screenplay at the 15th Busan Film Critics Awards and 35th Blue Dragon Film Awards.

Filmography

Film

Web series

Awards and nominations