Shin Yeon-shick

Shin Yeon-shick (born 1976) is a South Korean film director and screenwriter. He directed The Fair Love, The Russian Novel (2013), Rough Play (2013), Romans 8:37 (2017), and Cassiopeia (2022), as well as wrote the screenplays for Dongju: The Portrait of a Poet (2016) and Cobweb (2023).

Career Born in Seoul in 1976, Shin Yeon-shick dropped out of his Spanish Studies major at university to pursue a career in filmmaking. He made his directorial debut in 2003 with Piano Lesson, made on a micro-budget of . In 2005, Shin wrote and directed the black-and-white indie A Great Actor, which had its international premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

His next film was The Fair Love (2010), a nuanced, lyrical inter-generational romance starring Ahn Sung-ki and Lee Ha-na. But despite its well-known actors and positive reviews, the film was a box office failure with mainstream audiences.

Shin continued making low-budget experimental films. The Russian Novel, an ambitious arthouse drama about a depressed author (played by Kang Shin-hyo) who wakes up from a 27-year coma to find himself a literary sensation for a novel he didn't write, drew even more critical acclaim.

In 2013, he directed Rough Play (titled "An Actor Is an Actor" in Korean) from a screenplay by Kim Ki-duk about the dark underbelly of the Korean film industry through a young actor's quick rise and fall, and cast K-pop star Lee Joon in the leading role. Shin was determined to reshape Kim's symbolism-heavy script into a more narrative-driven, commercial film, and during post-production he rewrote and reshot 50% of the film. It made its world premiere at the Jeonju International Film Festival as part of the 2014 Jeonju Digital Project, and received a theatrical release in 2015. Shin then shared screenwriting credit with Kim Sung-ho for How to Steal a Dog (2014).

His upcoming project Like a French Film is an omnibus composed of four short films titled A Time to Leave, A Lady Selling Beer, A Remaining Time and Like a French Film, starring Shin Min-cheol and Kim Dasom.

Filmography Film

Television

Awards