Byun Young-joo is a South Korean film and television director.
12 Facts About Byun Young-joo
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Byun Young-joo's films explore issues of women's rights and human rights.
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Byun Young-joo graduated with a law degree from Ewha Womans University and did her graduate studies at the Department of Theater and Film at Chung-Ang University.
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Byun Young-joo is a founding member of the women's feminist film collective "Bariteo," which was established in 1989.
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Byun Young-joo worked as a cinematographer on Even Little Grass Has Its Own Name, a short film about gender discrimination at work, and My Children, a documentary film about childcare in a poor neighborhood.
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Byun Young-joo's efforts have lent a significant push to the women's demands for a formal apology and compensation from the Japanese government.
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Byun Young-joo then produced the documentary Koryu: Southern Women, South Korea, which deals with feminine modes of expression and existence in both pre-modern and modern Korea, to construct a complex and multiple portrait of women's lives as diasporic, or "koryu": temporary living in an alien land - women living in man's land.
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Byun Young-joo was credited as one of the cinematographers for the documentary Repatriation, which follows two North Korean political prisoners and their decade-long struggle to return home after their release.
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Byun Young-joo had her young actors take about two months of ballet classes so they could grasp the basics of the form.
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Byun Young-joo won Best Director at the 2012 Baeksang Arts Awards and Women in Film Korea Awards, and at 2.4 million tickets sold, Helpless is her biggest box-office hit yet.
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Byun Young-joo replaced Lee Kyu-man, who left the project while it was still being developed.
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Byun Young-joo will direct the upcoming eight-episode SBS drama The Mantis: Original Sin, which is an adaptation of the 2017 TF1 six-episode miniseries La Mante.