Directors Archive / KIM SEONG-HUN

KIM SEONG-HUN

Name in korean:

김성훈

Name pronunciation:

gim seong-hun

Profession:

Director

Date of Birth:

20 Febbraio 1971

Gender:

Man

Biography

Kim Seong-hun made his debut in the film industry as an assistant director and then made his debut in 2006 with his first feature film "How the Lack of Love Affects Two Men". Two years later he began writing the screenplay for "A Hard Day" presented at Cannes in 2014 in the Directors' Fortnight section and in competition in the Korean Horizons category at the Florence Korea Film Fest the following year.

Critique

A grotesque and perfectly crafted black comedy with hilarious comic implications, A Hard Day maintains the tension very high through the invincible weapon of irony. Cho Jin-woong is a villain from a film history textbook who makes his appearance about halfway through the film when the protagonist (an amazing Lee Sun-kyun) would seem to be able to breathe a sigh of relief. The disturbing Lieutenant Park Chang-min is, for the viewer, at first only a voice on the phone, then a figure from behind. His identity is slowly revealed to us as well as his institutional position and his status: he is not just any person, but a corrupt policeman who has gone far beyond Gun-so and his colleagues. If his entry on the scene first marks a change of register in the narrative, which takes noir nuances from black humor, it is paradoxically the grotesque scenes of violence in which the two protagonists are involved that bring back that comedy generated by the most improbable situations that have made the film, since its first passage at the 67th Cannes Film Festival, An instant cult.

Filmography