ZHANG Lu is a third-generation Korean Chinese filmmaker who has consistently made films about the lives of Korean Chinese and along the way has developed into one of the most followed Asian filmmakers. His life took a dramatic turn during his tenure as a professor of Chinese Literature at Yanbian University when he made a bet with a friend that “anyone can make a film.” He set out to make <11> (2001), a short film that was featured in the main competition for short ...More

ZHANG Lu is a third-generation Korean Chinese filmmaker who has consistently made films about the lives of Korean Chinese and along the way has developed into one of the most followed Asian filmmakers. His life took a dramatic turn during his tenure as a professor of Chinese Literature at Yanbian University when he made a bet with a friend that “anyone can make a film.” He set out to make <11> (2001), a short film that was featured in the main competition for short films at the Venice Film Festival. He gained currency in the international film circuit, as his second feature, <Grain in Ear> (2005), generated heated reactions at various international film festival, starting with grabbing the ACID Award from French Association for Distribution of Independent Cinema. Another film of his, <Desert Dream> (2007), was screened in competition at the Berlin Film Festival. Zhang is seeking ways to produce films outside of Korea and China after completing <Dooman River> (2009), a joint project with France. ZHANG made the mid-length documentary Over There (his first non-fiction work), a commissioned work that was part of the Jeonju International Film Festival’s Jeonju Digital Project in 2013. Later, that short was expanded into a feature called Scenery, which debuted at the Busan International Film Festival the same year. A year later, he returned to fiction filmmaking with the romantic feature Gyeongju, starring PARK Hae-il. Following the many invitations and acclaim he received for <Gyeongju>, ZHANG next focused on a short film, which he eventually added to, resulting in the arthouse anthology picture <Love and…>, with PARH Hae-il, MOON So-ri and AHN Sung-ki among others, which debuted at the Busan International Film Festival in 2015.Less