LEE Chung-hyun, born in 1990, started making short movies when he was still a student at an arts high school, among which <Tell Me> (2007) and <Open the Window> (2008), and even won a few contests. However, when he enrolled in college, he turned his attention to a media communication and journalism major and went on to work at an advertisement agency after graduation. He eventually gave filmmaking another go, and the first film he shot in a long time, <Bargain&...More

LEE Chung-hyun, born in 1990, started making short movies when he was still a student at an arts high school, among which <Tell Me> (2007) and <Open the Window> (2008), and even won a few contests. However, when he enrolled in college, he turned his attention to a media communication and journalism major and went on to work at an advertisement agency after graduation. He eventually gave filmmaking another go, and the first film he shot in a long time, <Bargain> (2015), would mark a turning point in his career. The film, which is made up of a 14-minute long take and deals with underage prostitution, won the 40,000 Blows Award for Best Action-Thriller Film as well as the Busan Cinephile Award and the Special Mention of the Jury at the Busan International Short Film Festival. It also caught the attention of film studio Yong Film, which took him under its wing and trained him in feature filmmaking. As a result, LEE participated in the screenplay of Yong Film’s 2017 drama <Heart Blackened> and wrote a script in preparation for his own feature debut. He changed his plans when he came across another scenario that was being developed at the studio, which borrowed the premise of the British-Puerto Rican film <The Caller> (2011). Starring JUN Jong-seo and PARK Shin-hye, the time-bending thriller <CALL> (2020) debuted on Netflix rather than in theaters due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After completing production on <CALL>, LEE took on a smaller project with <HEART ATTACK> (2020), his first go at the romantic genre, which was entirely filmed with smartphones. Less