Born in 1971, SEO Dong-il had spent six years working for a mobile communication company when he decided to quit in 2004 to start making documentaries. His first project was <Pink Palace> (2005), which broke the taboo on sex and disability. Between 2006 and 2007, he made a two-part documentary on his own family, <Big Girl, Little Girl and Guy in Between> (2007). His next documentary <Dumulmeori> (2013), winner of the Audience Award of the Seoul Independent F...More

Born in 1971, SEO Dong-il had spent six years working for a mobile communication company when he decided to quit in 2004 to start making documentaries. His first project was <Pink Palace> (2005), which broke the taboo on sex and disability. Between 2006 and 2007, he made a two-part documentary on his own family, <Big Girl, Little Girl and Guy in Between> (2007). His next documentary <Dumulmeori> (2013), winner of the Audience Award of the Seoul Independent Film Festival, shed light on the human and ecological cost of the renovation of South Korea’s four major rivers, which was the main endeavor of the LEE Myung-bak administration. In order to produce and distribute the movie, SEO co-founded Dumulmeori Pictures. In 2014, he also realized one of his dream projects when he opened a documentary filmmaking school for children, Pat Pat, in Yangpyeong. SEO earned another accolade from the Seoul Independent Film Festival the following year, this time the Jury Prize, for <The Disobeying Teacher> (2015), about teachers opposing a national education policy. After making <Welcome, Let’s Live Together> (2017), which was dedicated to the ecologist organization Hansalim created by farming unions, SEO came back in 2020 with <Your Face> (2020), which follows a woman caricaturist with Down syndrome.
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