Born in 1982, YOON Sung-hyun first studied film at the Seoul Institute of the Arts before entering the Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA). His early shorts had already been fairly popular on the festival circuit, most notable among them <Boys> (2008), but his first feature <Bleak Night> (2010), produced through KAFA’s feature film production research program, catapulted him to widespread recognition in the industry and led him to be hailed as one of the most pr...More

Born in 1982, YOON Sung-hyun first studied film at the Seoul Institute of the Arts before entering the Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA). His early shorts had already been fairly popular on the festival circuit, most notable among them <Boys> (2008), but his first feature <Bleak Night> (2010), produced through KAFA’s feature film production research program, catapulted him to widespread recognition in the industry and led him to be hailed as one of the most promising young directors. Not only did he receive the New Currents Award at the Busan International Film Festival, but he also scored Best New Director accolades from both the Blue Dragon Film Awards and the Grand Bell Film Awards, the two most prestigious industry award ceremonies in Korea. On top of launching the career of one of its leads PARK Jung-min, <Bleak Night> has long represented the ideal debut any young film director would dream of achieving, but this amount of praise also made YOON all the more cautious about his next step. His sophomore feature, <Time to Hunt> (2020) eventually came out 10 years later. Based on one of his screenplays, this dystopian action drama debuted in Berlin in 2020 but due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic it eventually released worldwide as a Netflix Original movie. Less