Welcome to Reel Talk, where we deep-dive into the minds of the industry’s finest—directors, producers, actors, writers, and all the unsung heroes on set. Each conversation gives a glimpse into their craft, passion, and the stories that drive them.

Kevin Jin Kwan Kim is a talented Korean-Canadian director and editor based in Vancouver, BC.

This is probably one of my favorite conversations to date with a film creative: we deep-dived into Kevin’s unique and "accidental" path to filmmaking, heard about his favourite film, Perfect Days, and explored the stories on his journey: establishing the visual language with his team, staying inspired and shooting for the stars.

Kevin is now working on his first feature film, My Dad, The Rockstar.

“I was in this limbo of being Korean-Canadian”

TP: After rewatching What Did They Say? & Daniel “Jun Ho” Lee, I think many of us can see that many of your works speak to the Asian-Canadian experience.

Has it always been something you’ve wanted to portray on screen when you first started directing? Or did it evolve over time?

So the first film was Daniel “Jun Ho” Lee and it was about my name.

Before I made this one, I was always a little bit hesitant to make a film about my identity.

Then there was this local competition called MAMM, and the theme for the year that I joined was our name.

So I made Daniel “Jun Ho” Lee. It was exactly my story.

Honestly, I thought no one would really care too much about it. It didn’t go to any festival and I was unsure what to do with it.

So I posted it on TikTok as the-last-ditched resort. That’s where I really found its audience: got a couple of million views there and went viral.

@kev.jkk

A personal story which I hope others can relate to #fypシ

What surprised me the most about the film going viral was that: I realized there is a massive community of people who experience the same thing as me.

Then, I made another film called Halmeoni, which is an extension of this experience. It’s about forgetting your mother tongue after moving away from your home country, which also went viral.

Now, with What Did They Say? being about growing up as a child translator, it also brought the same effect to the community.

From Simple to Profound: The Creative Process

TP: So let’s go all the way back to the beginning: what does your creative process look like? Do you have anchor points to come back to when developing your stories?

Yes. I usually try to view every immigrant experience as universal and pay close attention to other experiences that aren’t just my own, but also my family's and friends.

Then, I think of a way to make it as relatable as possible and not too specific. It should be simple, but catchy.

Emotionally impactful, and as short as possible. 

Having a simple formula, especially dialogues, allow my films to reach a much wider audience. For example, in Daniel “Jun Ho” Lee the only dialogue throughout the entire film is the name: Daniel, Daniel, Daniel. And this one got quite a bit of views.