Born in 1971, Yi Seungjun is a filmmaker and has made over a dozen of documentaries for both TV and cinema over the last decade. A graduate of Seoul National University in Oriental History, he started his career in 2000, when he teamed up with Lee Seonggyu to co-direct the documentary film <The Land of Invisible War>, which dealt with the ideological and sociological roots of the cycle of violence that has plagued the State of Bihar, in India, in the 1990s.
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Born in 1971, Yi Seungjun is a filmmaker and has made over a dozen of documentaries for both TV and cinema over the last decade. A graduate of Seoul National University in Oriental History, he started his career in 2000, when he teamed up with Lee Seonggyu to co-direct the documentary film <The Land of Invisible War>, which dealt with the ideological and sociological roots of the cycle of violence that has plagued the State of Bihar, in India, in the 1990s.
After <Breathing> (2002), about a neighbourhood planned for demolition in a redevelopment project, and the 2007 award-winning TV documentary <The Story of Two Women Like Wild Flowers>, Yi received the NETPAC Award at the Jeonju International Film Festival for <Children of God> (2008), which follows children in Kathmandu, Nepal who scrape a living by fishing up the money, clothes and food that are set adrift on the Bagmati River as part of traditional funerals at the Pashupatinath Temple. Following the foundation of Bluebird Pictures in 2008, he made a name for himself with <Planet of Snail> (2012), which revolves around a deaf and blind poet and a woman with a spinal cord impairment who live as a couple. The documentary won multiple awards including IDFA’s best feature length documentary and Silverdocs’ Sterling award for Best world feature. As a filmmaker, Yi has always strived to set the spotlight on the connections between underrepresented individuals. His next film <Wind on the Moon>, which received a production support fund following a successful pitch at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, debuted in competition at the festival in 2014. Echoing his previous work, it chronicles the relationship between a doting mother and her deaf and blind teenage daughter. He then documented the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games in <Crossing Beyond> (2018), and in <Shadow Flowers> (2021), he recorded the testimony of a North Korean woman who ended up in South Korea against her will after she was scammed by a broker and has never ceased to ask to be repatriated. In hist latest <The Red Herring> (2022), which debuted in Jeonju, Yi looks back at the scandals that forced Justice Minister Cho Kuk to step down in 2019.
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