Although he majored in design, CHO Il-hyeong has always been interested in audiovisual storytelling, and so he decided to continue his studies with a master’s degree in film direction in the US. After graduation, he spent the next decade working as an assistant director or production assistant mainly for television, notably DreamWorks TV and All Def Digital, but also the genre film label IFC Midnight, and found time to film a short in 2011 in his spare time, <Jin>. M...More

Although he majored in design, CHO Il-hyeong has always been interested in audiovisual storytelling, and so he decided to continue his studies with a master’s degree in film direction in the US. After graduation, he spent the next decade working as an assistant director or production assistant mainly for television, notably DreamWorks TV and All Def Digital, but also the genre film label IFC Midnight, and found time to film a short in 2011 in his spare time, <Jin>. Making good use of his experience as a Korean-speaking filmmaker working in the US, he wound up participating in several Korean projects that had on-location shoots in the US, such as E J-yong’s <Beyond the Camera> (2012), WON Shin-yun’s <The Suspect> (2013), and LEE Jeong-beom’s <No Tears for the Dead> (2014). CHO was working on turning into a screenplay Matt NAYLOR’s original story for <#ALONE> when he was offered the opportunity to be in charge of the film’s direction. Completed and released in 2020, just after Korea had been through its first wave of Covid-19 infections, the film inadvertently dealt with themes that particularly resonated with the population at the time, such as social distancing and the reliance on technology to stay in touch with closed ones amidst a pandemic, and became the first hit in Korean since the coronavirus outbreak, with 1.9 million tickets sold.Less