Biography
Kogonada (sometimes styled: kogonada) is a South Korean-born American filmmaker. Kogonada is known for his video essays that analyze the content, form, and structure of various films and television series. The essays frequently use narration and editing as lenses and highlight a director's aesthetic. Kogonada regularly contributes to Sight & Sound and is often commissioned by The Criterion Collection to create supplemental videos for its home video releases. He has also written, directed and ed...
Known For
Complete Filmography
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
2025
Director, Executive Producer
An imaginative tale of two strangers and the unbelievable journey that connects them.
Art-House America: Austin Film Society
2023
as Self
Founded by Richard Linklater in 1985 as a screening series dedicated to bringing experimental and art cinema to the city of Austin, Texas, the Austin ...
After Yang
2022
Editor, Writer, Director
When his young daughter's beloved companion — an android named Yang — malfunctions, Jake searches for a way to repair him. In the process, Jake discov...
Once There Was Everything
2017
Director
Kogonada looks at how the motif of doors reverberates through Robert Bresson's work.
Columbus
2017
Writer, Director, Editor
When a renowned architecture scholar falls suddenly ill during a speaking tour, his son Jin finds himself stranded in Columbus, Indiana - a small Midw...
Wes Anderson: From Above
2017
Editor, Director
A visual essay that highlights top-down shots from Wes Anderson's filmography.
Way of Ozu
2016
Director
Kogonada’s video essay showcases the similarities of the multiple films Yasujiro Ozu made in his lifetime. Ozu created a genre of his own – a way of f...
Godard in Fragments
2016
Director
In the 1960s, pioneering French New Wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard introduced the world to a new cinematic lexicon, generated from his innovative, aut...
The Way of Folk
2016
Director, Editorial Staff
In this brand new featurette, executive producer T Bone Burnett and the Coen brothers discuss the history of some of the songs that heard in Inside Ll...
Restoring the Apu Trilogy
2015
Director
In 1993, the original negatives of Satyajit Ray’s The Apu Trilogy were burned in a massive nitrate fire at a laboratory in London. Even though there w...
Dreams of Cinema
2015
as Narrator
This new video essay by filmmaker Kogonada explores the many layers of director Francois Truffaut's masterpiece "Day for Night."
Dreams of Cinema
2015
Editor, Writer, Director
This new video essay by filmmaker Kogonada explores the many layers of director Francois Truffaut's masterpiece "Day for Night."
Elemental
2015
Editor, Director
40,000 years in the making: Kogonada's video essay created for The Connected Series.
On Solace
2015
as Narrator
Filmmaker ::kogonada explores director Ingmar Bergman’s “Cries and Whispers," a film in three movements.
On Solace
2015
Director, Editor, Writer
Filmmaker ::kogonada explores director Ingmar Bergman’s “Cries and Whispers," a film in three movements.
Mirrors of Bergman
2015
Editor, Director
Filmmaker Kogonada reflects on women and mirrors in the films of Ingmar Bergman.
Auteur in Space
2015
Director, Editor
A video essay on how Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris transcends science fiction.
Criterion Designs
2014
Director
Kogonada's video essay made in conjunction with the release of Criterion Designs, a 300-page book, which features highlights from cover art commission...
Trick or Truth
2014
Director
"I wanted to write a fantasy with the atomic bomb as the theme." – Nobuhiko Obayashi
The Eye & the Beholder
2014
Director, Editor
A visual essay for "La dolce vita," directed by Kogonada for the Criterion Collection.
Eyes of Hitchcock
2014
Director, Editor
When characters stare at the camera in the films of Alfred Hitchcock, the look is almost always associated with the threat of death (through the eyes ...
Hands of Bresson
2014
Director
A visual essay on the tactile world of Robert Bresson created for the Criterion Collection.
Wes Anderson: Centered
2014
Editor, Director
As is made abundantly clear by this highly entertaining supercut of Wes Anderson’s films, the creator of such modern classics as The Royal Tenenbaums,...
Linklater: On Cinema and Time
2013
Director
If cinema is the art of time, Linklater is one of its most thoughtful and engaged directors. Unlike other filmmakers identified as auteurs, Linklater’...
What Is Neorealism?
2013
Director
Filmmaker Kogonada unpicks what defines the Golden Age of Italian cinema with a side-by-side comparison of two edits of the same film, one according t...
Malick: Fire & Water
2013
Editor, Director
Of all the recurring signatures of Malick, his use of fire and water might be the most telling, in part because there’s a significant shift between ea...
The World According to Koreeda Hirokazu
2013
Editor, Director
The cinema of Koreeda Hirokazu is defined by moments of everyday life. Whatever potential there is for heightened drama – the suicide of a husband, a ...
BIFA: 15 Years
2013
Director
Against Tyranny: Video Essay on King of the Hill
2013
Director
Video Essay on King of the Hill
Ozu: Passageways
2012
Director, Editor
People constantly appear walking through passageways in the films of Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu (1903-63). His art resides in the in-between spac...
Stanley Kubrick: One-Point Perspective
2012
Director
Kogonada's visual essay about the formalistice choices of master filmmaker Stanley Kubrick
Sounds of Aronofsky
2012
Director
Sound in film is often complimentary. Rarely does it suggest an aesthetic of its own. The punctuating, rhythmic soundscapes of Aronofsky are the excep...
Tarantino: From Below
2012
Editor, Director
Tarantino // From Below Music: Kaifuku Suru Kizu by Salyu
Lunch Line
2010
Director
Reframes the school lunch debate through an examination of the program's surprising past, uncertain present, and possible future. Six kids from one of...