Born in 1976, Choi Kookhee first studied Arabic at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, though by his own admission he would often miss classes to instead shoot documentaries. After his two years of mandatory military service, he was accepted into the University of Wisconsin, United States, where he majored in film. When he came back to Korea, he presented his first short, <Blue Decoding> (2002), at the Experimental Film & Video Festival in Seoul where it won o...More

Born in 1976, Choi Kookhee first studied Arabic at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, though by his own admission he would often miss classes to instead shoot documentaries. After his two years of mandatory military service, he was accepted into the University of Wisconsin, United States, where he majored in film. When he came back to Korea, he presented his first short, <Blue Decoding> (2002), at the Experimental Film & Video Festival in Seoul where it won one of the awards. He initially tried to find work as an assistant director, but since nobody was willing to give him such an opportunity, he decided to undertake a specialization program at the Korea National University of Arts, which he eventually completed in 2008. In the meantime, he managed to work with Hong Sangsoo, one of his favorite directors, on <Tale of Cinema> (2005). He made his long feature directorial debut in 2016 with the bowling drama film <SPLIT>, which won the New Flesh Award for Best First Feature at the Fantasia Film Festival. For his next feature film, the historical finance drama <Default> (2018), he teamed up with Kim Hyesoo, Yoo Ahin and Vincent Cassel to retrace the events that led to one of the most painful traumas in Korean people’s recent memory, the 1997 IMF bailout. With his latest film <Life is Beautiful> (2020), whose release was delayed to 2022 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Choi ventured into musicals with a literal nostalgia trip across Korea starring Yum Jungah and Ryu Seungryong performing numerous Korean pop classics.Less