Kim kiduk

Kim Ki-Duk was born in Bonghwa, in North Gyeongsang province, into a modest rural family in 1960. Although he was still a child, the family moved to Seoul, and at the age of 17 he began working as a laborer in a factory. No, Kim did not grow up with a camera filming what he saw around him, nor did he go through a movie or acting scene. He actually didn’t make his directorial debut until the late age of 33. Before he went through the army, and developed, yes, a love for painting.

A stay in Paris, and the viewing of the films The Silence of the Lambs by Jonathan Demme and The Lovers of the Pont-Neuf by Léos Carax seem to have set the trigger for his love of cinema, which would never leave him. He began to make his first steps writing scripts in the 90s, which were awarded in various contests, although not turned into movies. At least they helped him to be signed by Joyoung Films, a company with which he made his debut behind the camera in 1996 signing Ag-o, a tape in which his hallmarks appeared, a precious photograph that coexists with a harsh and repulsive plot, around a woman who tries to commit suicide and the homeless man who prevents it, and with whom a singular bond arises. Controversial and avant-garde are two adjectives that will accompany him throughout his career.

But the first title with which he hits the bell at festivals comes at the dawn of the third millennium, The Island is going to leave its mark. Once again, we have a tremendous story of frustrated suicides and twisted love affairs, which in Venice “slap” the staff: the sadomasochistic scene in which she swallows several hooks was very controversial because it fell into repulsive violence or, at least, not suitable for all audiences. palates. In 2002 , Unknown Address allows us to see a more established Kim Ki-Duk, but with a plot along the same unhealthy lines, here set in the 70s near a US military base, where a woman lives with her 20-year-old son, born of the relationship with an African American who is no longer there and does not respond to letters sent to the United States.

Spring, summer, autumn, winter… and spring  in 2003 supposes a third change, history with its seasonal cycle drinks from Buddhism and Eastern philosophy, again with its aesthetic preciousness. It would win the highest award at the Locarno Festival. Along these lines, in 2007 she would film El arco , one of her best films, an oriental tale about an old boatman and the young woman she has raised since she was a child. But before that, in 2004, he made Samaritan Girl , another film that follows a prostitute that won him recognition as best director in Berlin, and Iron 3 ., where he is enshrined in Venice as best director with the story of a “squatter” motorcyclist who in one of the houses where he is staying, meets a woman who is mercilessly beaten by her husband. The Italian festival would once again surrender at its feet in 2012 with Pieta , where it returns to the formula of the fable that produces conflicting feelings of fascination and rejection, following a woman who claims to be the lost mother of a violent and heartless guy.

Creative maturity had already reached him with Time , from 2006, where he explores the influence of the passage of time on a couple. Then, deep down, he turns himself around like a top, always with his plastic strength, his habitual eroticism and the resort to unpleasant violence, the variation can come from the framework of the action, a prison in Breath ( 2007 ), or looking into the world of dreams in Dream (2008).

As of 2013, Kim Ki-Duk’s career began to decline, he no longer surprised the public, and his films had less diffusion. But she kept working, and in 2019 she had shot in Kazakhstan Dim . At the time of the #MeToo movement, an actress accused him of sexual assault during the filming of Moebiuseu in 2013, which ended with a fine and the dismissal of the most serious charges, but which involved him in a new lawsuit in which he accused the another part of defamation, and led him to film outside his country. In November 2020, he had decided to settle in Riga, the capital of Latvia, but there he fell ill with Covid-19, the cause of his death after a month.