Yim Soonrye, born in 1960, first majored in English Language and Literature before completing a master’s degree in Theatre and Film at Hanyang University. Having found her interest in film while watching dozens of films at the French Cultural Center, she decided to study filmmaking at the University of Paris 8. After her graduation in 1992, she served as continuity supervisor on <Out To The World> (1994). Her short film <Promenade in the Rain>(1994), about the ...More

Yim Soonrye, born in 1960, first majored in English Language and Literature before completing a master’s degree in Theatre and Film at Hanyang University. Having found her interest in film while watching dozens of films at the French Cultural Center, she decided to study filmmaking at the University of Paris 8. After her graduation in 1992, she served as continuity supervisor on <Out To The World> (1994). Her short film <Promenade in the Rain>(1994), about the loneliness of a 30-something single woman who works as a cashier at a small cinema, received the Grand Prize of the Seoul Short Film Festival. Her feature debut <Three Friends> (1996) was first presented at the Busan International Film Festival, where it picked up the NETPAC Award. Her sympathy for those who are marginalized to the fringe of society showed again in the influential <The Waikiki Brothers> (2001), a drama about a third-rate nightclub band that travels from one small town to another for a gig. <Forever the Moment> (2008), based on the true story of the 2004 Korean women’s national handball team that won the silver medal at the Athens Olympics, was a box office success that sold four million tickets in Korea. The film won Best Picture at the Blue Dragon Film Awards and also earned Yim the Grand Bell Award for Best Director and the title of Women Film Personality of the Year from the Women in Film Korea Association. After she released the melodrama with Buddhist overtones, <Rolling Home with a Bull> (2010), YIM served as executive producer on 2011’s <Romance Joe> and also contributed a short to the omnibus <Sorry, Thank You> that same year. She returned to the director’s chair with the family comedy <South Bound>, starring Kim Yunseok, which was released in theaters in early 2013. Towards the end of the following year, she released <The Whistleblower>, a more accomplished return to politically conscious filmmaking. Though fictionalized, the film largely takes after the story of the fraudulent stem cell scientist Hwang Woosuk. Featuring Park Haeil, Yoo Yeonseok, and Lee Gyoungyoung, the film was a solid earner in theaters. Yim then found a new audience with <Little Forest> (2018), based on a Japanese manga, as its soothing nature generated positive word of mouth upon its release in the winter of 2018 and eventually attracted 1.5 million viewers. Her latest work <The Point Men>, released in 2023, fictionalizes a hostage situation that occurred in Afghanistan in 2007 when a group of Korean missionaries was captured by Talibans. Yim served as the president of an animal rights association for 12 years, and also the co-president of the Korean Center for Gender Equality in Film Deundeun from 2018 to 2021. Yim Soon Rye is one of the most representative female directors in Korea. The fact that she was the seventh female director in the entire history of Korean film drew attention to her debut, but her position now in the industry cannot be explained only by that fact. Yim, with her own themes and aesthetics, created a cinema that showed the daily lives of people in a society that alienated them, and by doing this, she marked a unique path and a personal filmography that continues today.Less