Controversial South Korean film-maker Kim Ki-duk has died aged 59 in a Latvian hospital, where he was being treated for Covid-19. The news was initially reported by Vitaly Mansky, director of Latvia’s Artdocfest film festival, and later confirmed by Kim’s family in the Korean media. Kim was understood to be developing a film project set in the Baltic region when he became ill.
Born in 1960, Kim made his name with a series of violent yet aesthetically challenging features, including The Isle (2000) and Bad Guy (2001) – the former of which was sanctioned by the British Board of Film Classification for animal cruelty. Subsequently he became a fixture on the international festival circuit with films such as Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter ... and Spring (2003) and 3-Iron (2004), and he would go on to win the Golden Lion at Venice with his 2012 film Pieta, which the Guardian described as “bristl[ing] with Kim’s trademark anger and agony”.
However, Kim’s directing career was derailed after he was accused in 2018 of rape and sexual assault by three women, along with his regular acting collaborator Cho Jae-hyun. Charges against Kim were dropped for lack of evidence, but he was fined 5m Korean won (£3,480). Kim then sued one of his accusers and the makers of a documentary about the case for defamation, but lost. Kim completed one more film after the scandal, the Russian-language film Dissolve, which was shot in Kazakhstan.
