Jang Ryool is a Korean Chinese producer, scriptwriter, and director. Zhang was originally a novelist before embarking on a career in cinema. His arthouse films have mostly focused on the disenfranchised, particularly ethnic Koreans living in China.
He began his career with a short film Eleven (2000) which was invited to Venice International Film Festival. He used to teach Chinese Literature at Yanbian University in Jilin and wrote novels before changing his path to the film industry. He is a third-generation Korean Chinese and this background has provided him with a special attention on Korean diaspora which extends to North Korean refugees. He debuted with a feature Tang Poetry (2003) which was premiered at Locarno International Film Festival and continued to make his second feature Grain in Ear (2005) that won the New Currents Award at Busan International Film Festival and ACID award at Cannes Critics’ Week. His following films also garnered numerous awards at acclaimed international film festivals including Desert Dream (2007), which was selected to the Competition of Berlin International Film Festival, the serial movies Chongqing (2007) and Iri (2008), which are set in two cities in Korea and China, and Dooman River (2010) which was selected to the Generation Section at Berlin International Film Festival. His latest films are Scenery (2013), Gyongju (2014), Love and… (2015), Ode to the Goose (2018), and Fukuoka (2019). His 2016 film A Quiet Dream (2016) was introduced as the opening film at Busan International Film Festival.
(Source: BIFF and IMDb)