LEE Hae-jun wrote the scripts for <No Manners>, <Au Revoir, UFO>, and other films in collaboration with [LEE Hae-yong]. His debut feature <Like a Virgin>(2006), also co-directed with [LEE Hae-yong], was a one-of-a-kind film that could not be put under any single category of queer, coming-of-age, or melodrama. It tells of a high school boy who wants to become a woman and joins his school ssireum team, hoping to win prize at a tournament so that he can use the...More

LEE Hae-jun wrote the scripts for <No Manners>, <Au Revoir, UFO>, and other films in collaboration with [LEE Hae-yong]. His debut feature <Like a Virgin>(2006), also co-directed with [LEE Hae-yong], was a one-of-a-kind film that could not be put under any single category of queer, coming-of-age, or melodrama. It tells of a high school boy who wants to become a woman and joins his school ssireum team, hoping to win prize at a tournament so that he can use the prize money toward a sex-change surgery. LEE’s first solo feature was <Castaway on the Moon>, which featured excellent acting performance of [JUNG Jae-young]. A story of a man who wants to kill himself, but instead seek refuge on a deserted island in the middle of Han River, <Castaway on the Moon> depicts the loneliness and self-deceit of the modern men adrift and isolated in their modern urban life. If the queer code in <Like a Virgin> came from [LEE Hae-young], it can be said that the loneliness of the movie’s protagonist was LEE Hae-jun’s making. LEE remained quiet for a few years before returning in 2014, first as a script editor on the Cannes-selected action thriller <A Hard Day> and later that year with <My Dictator>, his second solo directing effort, featuring SUL Kyung-gu as a struggling actor who lands a position as a KIM Il-sung impersonator for the Korean Intelligence Service in the 1970s. Slowly losing his mind to the role, his devoted son eventually drifts away from him, and years later his son, played by PARK Hae-il, tries to reconnect with him. The project was originally a Hong Kong Asian Film Financing (HAF) project in 2012.Less