Ryoo Seungwan, born in 1973, has always been a lover of Hong Kong action cinema's no-holds-barred action. He was such a fan of the Shaw Brothers and Jackie Chan that he not only took up taekwondo but also saved up for years to buy an 8mm camera. Ryoo had to drop out of school to make a living as the young head of his family after the tragic death of both his parents while he was still in middle school. He ultimately chose to enroll in a film workshop, where he met Park Chanwo...More

Ryoo Seungwan, born in 1973, has always been a lover of Hong Kong action cinema's no-holds-barred action. He was such a fan of the Shaw Brothers and Jackie Chan that he not only took up taekwondo but also saved up for years to buy an 8mm camera. Ryoo had to drop out of school to make a living as the young head of his family after the tragic death of both his parents while he was still in middle school. He ultimately chose to enroll in a film workshop, where he met Park Chanwook, who instantly became a close friend. Through his contacts, he was able to work as the director of lighting on one of Bong Joonho’s earliest shorts, <Incoherence>. Ryoo then made his own debut with the short <Transmutated Head> in 1996 and subsequently worked as an assistant director and actor in his friend Park's feature, <Trio> (1997). 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 approache with an offer to release an anthology feature made up of the two winning films along with two others that he would produce specifically for it. 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 with <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 aesthetic with an emphasis on striking action sequences. His 2010 film, <The Unjust>, a crime drama that took aim at corruption in the police was met with both critical and commercial success, with 2.8 million admissions. Ryoo returned three years later with <The Berlin File> (2012), a story about four operatives from North and South Korea living clandestine and dangerous lives under covert identities in the German capital. In 2014, Ryoo filmed his noirish detective thriller <Veteran>, reuniting with Hwang Jung-min. With more than 13 million admissions upon its debut in 2015, the film is Ryoo's biggest commercial trumph to date. Next up for him was a more ambitious project in terms of scale, the historical drama <The Battleship Island> (2017) which chronicles the story of a group of Koreans attempting to escape from the infamous island of Hashima, where the Japanese subjected them to forced labor. He then took a step seat to focus on his role as a producer at Filmmaker R & K, where he worked on the occult thriller <SVAHA: THE SIXTH FINGER> (2018) and the disaster comedy <EXIT> (2019). In 2021, Ryoo returned to the director’s chair for <Escape from Mogadishu>, a new challenge for the filmmaker as it was fully shot outside of Korea, in Morocco. Two years later, he released <Smugglers>, one of the most anticipated titles that year, after its premier on the Piazza Grande of the Locarno International Film Festival.Less