Min Kyu-dong

Min Kyu-dong (born September 12, 1970) is a South Korean film director, screenwriter and producer. He made his feature directorial debut in horror film Memento Mori (1999), followed by romantic comedies All for Love (2005) and All About My Wife (2012), queer films Antique (2008) and In My End Is My Beginning (2013), melodrama The Last Blossom (2011), and period drama The Treacherous (2015). Career Min Kyu-dong studied economics at Seoul National University, and upon graduation, he entered the Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA). In 1999 Min made his first feature Memento Mori, alongside KAFA classmate and co-director Kim Tae-yong. Considered the most influential Korean horror film of the 2000s, Memento Mori has attained a modern-day classic status among Korean cinephiles. After pursuing further film studies in France, Min returned in 2005 with his sophomore effort and solo directorial debut All for Love. Similar to Robert Altman's Short Cuts and Richard Curtis's Love Actually, Min utilized a large ensemble cast to weave a multitude of stories into a single narrative. About a diverse group of couples and singles who experience love or tragedy in the span of one week in Seoul (the Korean title translates to "The Most Beautiful Week of My Life"), the film was a box office success. In 2008, Min explored homosexual eroticism in Antique, a screen adaptation of the popular Japanese manga Antique Bakery by Fumi Yoshinaga. The film, about four pretty boys with hidden pasts working in a French pastry shop, was invited to the Berlin International Film Festival. For his segment in the 2009 omnibus film Five Senses of Eros, Min continued his fascination with queer cinema. Using illusive and phantasmal cinematography, he brought a more experimental and dramatically edgy take on two women involved in a mild S&M relationship after the death of the man they both loved. A feature-length director's cut of In My End Is My Beginning was later screened at the 2009 Busan International Film Festival, then released in theaters in 2013.