[News Figures] Invited to Cannes Non-Competitive Section... 'Geomi Jip' Director Kim Ji-woon

Crossing Genres of Horror, Comedy, and Noir with Unique Direction
Decided to Submit Scenario While Eating Ramen at a Restaurant
Won Like a Movie... Debut Feature Film

On the 16th (local time), the 76th Cannes International Film Festival opened at the Lumi?re Grand Theatre in Cannes, France, but no Korean films were selected for the competition section. However, a total of seven films advanced to the non-competition section.

Particularly, attention is focused on Geomi Jip (Spiderweb), starring Song Kang-ho, who last year became the first Korean to win the Best Actor award at Cannes for Broker. This film was produced by director Kim Ji-woon, who was invited to the Cannes International Film Festival non-competition section for the third time, following A Bittersweet Life (2004) and The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008).

Director Kim was born in 1964 in Seoul. After dropping out of the Theater Department at Seoul Institute of the Arts, he was unemployed until 1996 when he had a car accident. To cover the repair costs, he wrote a screenplay titled Good Times, which won a contest hosted by the magazine Premiere, marking his entry into the film industry. Then, in 1997, his screenplay Quiet Family, submitted to the first Cine21 screenplay contest, won an award and was made into a film in 1998. This was Kim’s first feature film debut.

Director Kim Ji-woon [Photo by Yonhap News]

There is a story behind the preparation for the Cine21 contest that sounds like a movie plot. According to an episode revealed by Kim in the 2006 interview A Very Special Interview with Gong Ji-young, Kim went to a restaurant in Daehangno and ordered ramen. The server at the time brought the ramen in a Cine21 magazine instead of a tray, and the magazine contained an advertisement stating that the screenplay contest deadline was one week away.

Seeing this, Kim, who was unemployed at the time, decided to “do something productive” and entered the screenplay contest, winning an award. In the same interview, he also revealed a backstory related to dropping out of university: he was expelled because he missed classes while watching an LG Twins professional baseball game, which caused a change in his enrollment status.

Crossing genres and showing distinctive direction, Kim solidified his position as a successful director with the 2000 film Rules of the Game, starring Song Kang-ho, which ranked second at the box office following the simultaneously released Joint Security Area (JSA). In 2003, he again succeeded at the box office by attracting 3.15 million viewers with A Tale of Two Sisters, a reinterpretation of the classic Janghwa Hongryeon jeon.

He has received numerous awards including the Best Fantasy Film Award at the 19th Fantasporto International Film Festival (1999), Best Director at the 29th Blue Dragon Film Awards (2008), Pioneer Award at the 1st Marie Claire Film Awards (2013), Best Film Director at the 53rd Baeksang Arts Awards (2017), and Director’s Week Award at the 37th Fantasporto International Film Festival (2017).

Meanwhile, the film Geomi Jip is a black comedy set in the 1970s, depicting the chaotic struggles of a film director obsessed with the compulsion to create a masterpiece.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.