In May, running alongside the Cannes Film Festival, the film market Marché du Film is hosting its Producers Network that was launched in 2003. It brings together over 400 producers from around the world each year. Through a series of breakfast meetings, it spotlights each of the presenting partners. This year, this includes the Korean Film Council (KOFIC), which will showcase five promising producers from the local film industry on May 18. The other presenting partners consists of the European Film Commissions Network (EUFCN), Dominican Republic Film Commission (DGCINE), Swiss Films, Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia, and DEENTAL-ACP.

This week we profile the Korean producers that will be under the spotlight: Young Kim (MIRU Pictures), Oh Eun-young (EO Contents Group, Inc.), Shin Su-won (JUNE Films), Youn Hee-young (MOCUSHURA Inc), and Lee Dongha (REDPETER FILMS Co., Ltd).  

 A Tale of Two Sisters

Young Kim

Having been involved in Kim Jee-woon’s A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) as a co-producer, Young Kim has worked in the Korean film industry for more than twenty years. She was also the executive producer on the omnibus film Twentidentity (2004) that consists of 20 short films directed by former students of the Korean Film Academy of Film Arts (KAFA) including Bong Joon Ho, Hur Jin-ho and Kim Tae-yong to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the film school. 

Young Kim would also work as an executive producer at KAFA +, the Korean Film Academy’s feature-length film production branch supporting KAFA films including I’m in Trouble! (2009), Men Without Women (2009) and One Day After (2008). She would also go on to head CGV Movie Collage (former brand name of CGV Arthouse, CJ CGV’s variety cinema chain) and then was the head of cinema business department of CJ CGV America in Los Angeles. 

She also founded her own production company MIRU Pictures that produces tech-based short films, documentaries in addition to developing feature films and series that includes international co-production projects. It produced the critically acclaimed documentary The Man who Paints Water Drops (2021), a France-South Korean co-production, about the renowned artist Kim Tschang-yeul. The film was directed by his son Kim Oan and French filmmaker Brigitte Bouillot. 

Her forthcoming project in development is an international co-production between Korea, the European Union and Nepal called Dhammapada (aka Words of Wisdom). Bringing together melodrama and suspense it follows a man called Sung-hoon who seeks to eradicate his sins after feeling immense guilt by getting intricate tattoos. But Myung-ji summons him from his past crimes leading to a catastrophic conclusion. 

 Bottom of the Water

Oh Eun-young

Working in different roles in Korea’s top studios focusing primarily in finance, Oh Eun-young has been involved in Korean films for more than two decades. She has worked in film investment at both Showbox and CJ ENM and, also was a Content Fund Manager at ISU Venture Capital. 

Oh founded EO Contents Group and is currently its CEO. The company is currently producing a total of 27 television series and ten films. Furthermore, having worked with 200 writers it has 102 original IPs, and holds a further 53 original IP copyrights for film and dramas that it has acquired. It has emerged along with other so-called “Bridge Studios” that are seeking to capitalize on the global popularity of Korean content working with writers, securing IP, and producing content for the major streamers and broadcasters. 

EO Contents Group produced the drama Night has Come collaborating with Studio X +U, which is streaming on Netflix. The company was also behind the horror mystery film Bottom of the Water directed by Lim Ji-hoon and produced by Oh that was released in cinemas in 2023. 

One of its upcoming projects is the mystery thriller feature film The Well about a woman named Su-in who unable to remember her past discovers that there there are two families who are claiming her as their own. The film documents Su-min’s struggle to find out who her real next of kin is. 

Pluto  

Shin Su-won

Already an established and award-winning director Shin Su-won is a prominent figure in Korea’s film industry. Like Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong, Shin was a teacher before becoming a filmmaker. She made her first film Passerby #3 (2010) that screened at the Jeonju International Film Festival and Tokyo International Film Festival. Using her own money to make the film, she also produced it and established the production company JUNE Film. 

Shin attracted significant attention for her next film Circle Line (2012) that won the Canal+ Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and made her feature debut with the film Pluto (2013) which premiered at the Busan International Film Festival garnering critical acclaim. Her subsequent films include Madonna (2015), which premiered in Cannes, Glass Garden (2017) that opened the Busan International Film Festival and Hommage (2022), which stars Lee Jung-eun as a director who is attempting to restore Hong Eun-won’s A Woman Judge (1962). 

Shin is also playing an increasing role in producing having worked as an executive producer on her recent projects including Hommage and her 2020 film Light for the Youth (2020). All of her films have been produced through JUNE Film that has been headed by producer Lim Choong-keun. 

JUNE Film’s upcoming project is A way to Étretat, which is to be directed, written, and produced by Shin. Lim is also producing. It follows a single mother from Korea who arrives in Paris with her six-year-old daughter, and they end up traveling to Étretat together with a Korean-born, French-adopted woman Lea. 

Because I Hate Korea 

Youn Hee-young 

After studying photography at the Southern Institute of Technology in New Zealand, Youn Hee-young began his career in film as an assistant director on Camel(s) (2001). He has since worked on a number of notable of independent films, often working with director Jang Kun-jae. The pair along with producer Kim Woo-ri run the production company MOCUSHURA that was established in 2009. 

Youn has been involved in most of Jang’s films, he translated into English Jang’s second feature Sleepless Night (2013) and worked as a post-production assistant on his critically acclaimed A Midsummer’s Fantasia (2014) that was a co-production between Japan and Korea.  He produced Jang’s Vestige (co-directed by Kim Jong-kwan) and Kang’s Because I Hate Korea (2023) that was partly set in New Zealand and was invited to the Busan International Film Festival in 2023 as the opening film. 

Youn has also written the English subtitles for several Korean independent films including the award winning Hot in Day, Cold at Night (2021). 

Collaborating again with Kang on his next project through MOCUSHURA, the forthcoming Staring at Your Back is set in a seaside town in Japan where Takura is reunited with his close friend, Korean-Japanese Min-soo. The two young men rekindle their friendship, but Takeru begins to develop feelings towards Min-soo.  

Train to Busan 

Lee Dongha

A now seasoned producer, Lee Dongha’s first credit in the role was on the France-Korea co-production A Brand New Life (2009). Lee also produced Lee Chang-dong’s Poetry (2010), Jang Joon-hwan’s Hwayi: A Monster Boy (2013) and Lee Yoon-ki’s A Man and a Woman (2016).

Lee established REDPETER FILMS in 2014 that produced Yeon Sang-ho’s seminal Train to Busan (2016) that broke out internationally initiating the K-zombie sub-genre. Lee would then also produce some of Yeon’s subsequent films Psychokinesis (2018), Peninsula (2020) along with other films including Kim Yoon-seok’s directorial feature debut Another Child (2019) and the animated film Princess Aya (2019). He also produced the Netflix series The Bequeathed (2024).

The producer’s upcoming projects includes a film titled Deulgukhwa about the breakup of one of the most iconic Korean rock bands, Deulgukwa that was formed in the tumultuous 1980s. Lee’s lineup also features a new film by July Jung (A Girl at My Door (2014), Next Sohee (2022)) called Dora and an action film, SURGA, which is set on islands in South-East Asia about two men who assist a criminal in identity thefts. Lee is also producing Paradise Asylum, a post-apocalyptic six-part series.

Edited by Shim Eunha

Written by Jason Bechervaise