Born in 1973, Ryoo Seungwan has been a fan of the no-holds-barred action of Hong Kong action cinema ever since his young age. He was such a fan of the Shaw Brothers and Jack Chan that not only did he take up taekwondo, but he also bought an 8mm camera after saving up for years. After the untimely loss of both his parents when he was still in middle school, Ryoo had to drop out of school to making a living as the young head of his family, doing all kinds of odd jobs. He eventu...More

Born in 1973, Ryoo Seungwan has been a fan of the no-holds-barred action of Hong Kong action cinema ever since his young age. He was such a fan of the Shaw Brothers and Jack Chan that not only did he take up taekwondo, but he also bought an 8mm camera after saving up for years. After the untimely loss of both his parents when he was still in middle school, Ryoo had to drop out of school to making a living as the young head of his family, doing all kinds of odd jobs. He eventually decided to enter a film workshop and met in 1993 a young Park Chanwook, who would quickly become a close friend. Through his contacts, he managed to work as the director of lighting on one of Bong Joonho’s earlier shorts, <Incoherence>. In 1996, Ryoo made his debut with the short <Transmutated Head> and then took part, as an assistant director and actor, in the film <Trio> (1997), from his friend Park. After his shorts <Rumble> and <Modern Man> respectively won Best Picture at the Busan International Short Film Festival and the Seoul Independent Film Festival, he was offered the opportunity to release an anthology movie made of the two winning films along with two other that he would make for the occasion. Ultimately produced with less than USD 100,000, it was released in 2000 under the title <Die Bad> and was immediately lauded by the critics, who saw in this work all the buoyant energy of amateur films but with the skills of a professional filmmaker to sustain it. Since taking the Korean film scene by storm, Ryoo has been making noteworthy films in the action and thriller genre such as <No Blood No Tears> (2001), <Arahan> (2004), <Crying Fist> (2004), <City of Violence> (2006) and <Dachimawa Lee> (2007), earning the nickname of “Action Kid of the Korean Film Industry”. Ryoo’s pulpy crime thrillers can be characterized by his hard-edged, innovative style with an emphasis on lavishing action sequences. His 2010 film, <The Unjust>, a crime drama that took a sharp observation into corruption in privileged classes of the modern Korean society was met with both critical and commercial success garnering 2.8 million admissions. Three years later, Ryoo was back with <The Berlin File> (2012), a story of four operatives from divided Korea leading clandestine and dangerous lives under covert identities in the German capital. In 2014, Ryoo took part in the 3D horror omnibus <MAD SAD BAD>, which opened the Jeonju International Film Festival in 2014, and filmed his noirish detective thriller <Veteran>, re-teaming with HWANG Jung-min. The latter achieved the biggest commercial success to date for Ryoo, with more than 13 million admissions upon its release in 2015. Next for him was a more ambitious project in terms of scale, with the historical drama <The Battleship Island> (2017) which tells the story of a group of Koreans in their attempt to escape the infamous island of Hashima where the Japanese forced submitted them to forced labor. He then took a back seat to focus on his role as a producer at Filmmaker R & K and worked in such capacities on the occult thriller <SVAHA: THE SIXTH FINGER> (2018) and the disaster comedy <EXIT> (2019). In 2021, Ryoo was back in the director’s chair for <Escape from Mogadishu>, which represented a new challenge for the director as it was entirely shot outside of Korea, in Morocco.Less