21 Facts About Yim Soon-rye

Yim Soon-rye is a South Korean film director and screenwriter.

Yim Soon-rye is considered one of the few leading female auteurs of Korean New Wave cinema.

Yim Soon-rye received her master's degree in Film Studies from Paris 8 University in 1992 with a thesis titled "Study on Kenji Mizoguchi".

Yim Soon-rye made her feature film debut with Three Friends, which explored Korean masculinity and marginalization through the lives of three young men who have difficulty adjusting to the social system.

Yim Soon-rye won Best Screenplay at the 9th Chunsa Film Art Awards and Best Director at the 21st Korean Association of Film Critics Awards in 2001, while Waikiki Brothers won Best Film at the 38th Baeksang Arts Awards in 2002.

Yim Soon-rye's follow-up was the documentary Keeping the Vision Alive: Women in Korean Filmmaking, an homage to both pioneers such as Park Nam-ok and Hwang Hye-mi, and contemporary directors like Byun Young-joo and Jang Hee-sun.

In 2003, Yim Soon-rye was among six filmmakers who participated in If You Were Me, an omnibus funded by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea that deals with different human rights issues.

Yim Soon-rye's short film The Weight of Her is a satirical take on female beauty and body image, as a high school girl feels pressured to undergo plastic surgery in order to get hired.

Yim Soon-rye then produced A Smile, the feature directorial debut of fellow female Korean director Park Kyung-hee, and later made a cameo appearance in Park's short film Under a Big Tree.

Seven years after Waikiki Brothers, Yim Soon-rye directed her third feature film Forever the Moment, titled in Korean "The Best Moment of Our Lives".

Yim Soon-rye received the Park Nam-ok Award for outstanding achievement from the 10th International Women's Film's Festival in Seoul, and won Woman Filmmaker of the Year at the 9th Women in Film Korea Awards.

In 2009, Yim Soon-rye again collaborated with the NHRCK with her fourth feature Fly, Penguin.

In 2012, Yim Soon-rye executive produced Lee Kwang-kuk's debut film Romance Joe, and appeared in Heo Chul's documentary Ari Ari the Korean Cinema.

The film received criticism from some quarters that opined it was overly politicized with its anti-establishment and anti-capitalist tone as well as its parallels to the Jeju Naval Base, but Yim Soon-rye said she "tried to deliver the story as joyfully as possible" with a light-hearted approach despite its weighty themes of individual freedom, national duty, and familial separation.

In 2014, Yim Soon-rye directed Whistle Blower, based on the real-life events surrounding Hwang Woo-suk, then a biotechnology professor at Seoul National University who gained international renown in 2004 after claiming that he had successfully carried out experiments cloning human embryonic stem cells.

Yim Soon-rye is most known for making films that focus on South Korean society.

Yim Soon-rye, who is an animal rights activist, has worked on films that focus on human relationships with animals.

Yim Soon-rye creates films that have personal stories and narratives that deviate from the big-budget blockbusters of the Korean film industry.

Yim Soon-rye utilizes long dialogue takes, slow camera movement, slow cuts, and medium-close up shots.

Yim Soon-rye has one dog and wanted to give the dog a bigger space to run around.

Yim Soon-rye is a nature lover and is more acquainted with the country-side lifestyle, despite working in the city.