So Yong Kim

Kim is one of the most authentic and original young directors working in American independent cinema today. She was born in Korea and immigrated to the USA when she was 12. She studied painting, performance and video art at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she earned her MFA. She has made several experimental short films including A Bunny Rabbit, shot by renowned cinematographer Christopher Doyle. In 2003, Kim also produced the award-winning Icelandic feature Salt, directed by her husband and creative partner Bradley Rust Gray, with whom she has established a fertile working relationship. In 2006, Kim was featured on the list of the «25 Filmmakers to Watch» in Filmmaker Magazine. Her subsequent career has fully confirmed these predictions. Her first film, In Between Days, was acclaimed by the critics and won the Special Jury Prize at the 2007 Sundance Festival, together with the FIPRESCI International Critics’ Prize in Berlin, the LA Critics’ Prize and Best Film and Best Actress Prizes in Buenos Aires. This unanimous acclaim is due to the original autobiographical nature of the film, Kim’s in-depth observation of its teenage protagonists and the unusual dramas that unfold from this strategy, based on the characters’ non-judgemental nature. Her next film, Treeless Mountain (2008) followed the same dramatic thread, and was based on a story of abandonment and two little girls’ capacity for recovery, in a film that Village Voice called «one of the best films about childhood ever made». The script was supported by the Atelier at Cannes, the Sundance Institute’s Writers and Directors Labs and the Pusan Promotion Plan. In 2009, So Yong Kim took part in the omnibus film Chinatown Film Project.