LEE Myung-se has been appointed as the new Festival Chairman of the Green Film Festival in Seoul (GFFIS) ahead of its 15th edition. This year’s GFFIS will take place from May 17 to 23. The appointment makes LEE the first filmmaker to lead the festival since its inception in 2004.

Master stylist LEE has been an active director since his film Gagman (1989) and developed a reputation overseas following his critically acclaimed detective noir Nowhere to Hide (1999). His next work was the period swordplay action-drama The Duelist (2005) and his most recent feature-length film was 2007’s M. Since then, LEE has remained active on several projects. Last year, he contributed a short film to the JTBC program ‘All Audiences’, which invited several filmmakers to direct commissioned shorts while documenting their work processes.

Several other names fill out the organizing committee of this year’s GFFIS, including Late Autumn (2011) director KIM Tae-yong, Princess Aurora (2005) filmmaker PANG Eun-jin, director MOON Hyun-sung (As One, 2012), Busan International Film Festival programmer KIM Young-woo, who formerly served as the festival director of GFFIS, KIM So-yong, Director of the Overseas Production Planning Team at Saram Entertainment, KANG Mi-sun, professor of architecture at Ewha Women’s University, and JEONG Jae-seung, a biotechnology and brain engineering professor at KAIST.