For a director with moderate views, making a documentary like OUR PRESIDENT was somewhat reckless. It contained denotations from former President Park Geun-hye's office when a blacklist was in the cultural sector. The production was canceled several times until 2016 when the opposition won the 20th general election. I saw this as my airbag and opportunity and really accelerated the project. It was a personal goal of mine not to let Roh Moohyun feel lonely during his memorial service, which was coming up in May 2017. At the time, the suppression on the cultural sector was growing stronger. Expecting difficulty with the film’s release, the production crew joked about posting the film on YouTube and fleeing to Saseungbong Island, an uninhabited island out in the West Sea.

Funding was the issue. It was already tricky for documentaries to even get considered to receive funding, but available funding programs, including government-supported programs, would have professionals dispatched by the authority, who were sure to stop the project. This is why we had to secure the resources quietly as if we were raising funds for the independence movement. It's not easy to secure funding for documentaries, even if it's done publicly, so the process we went through made our situation extremely difficult. The JEONJU Cinema Project was willing to fund half of our production budget despite that. In the case of some investors, verbal promises did not lead to execution, or bad situations continued, such as making deposits only after watching a screening at a film festival. It was thanks to the JEONJU Cinema Project that we barely made the finishing line. To our surprise, governments changed in May, and Roh Moohyun's memorial service was well-attended without needing the help of OUR PRESIDENT. Our production crew also didn't have to flee to Saseungbong Island. Instead of acting as a memorial film as initially intended, OUR PRESIDENT became a celebratory film. Simply put, we received the help of the JEONJU Cinema Project during a difficult patch, and things worked out well for the film. It was, overall, a blessed project. LEE Changjae

Between (2006), On The Road (2012), The Hospice (2014), This is the President (2023)

A Portrait Painted with the Collection of Scattered Memories
The original title was R Project. The film had to be produced secretly due to the name R signified. However, because it was the very first documentary on Roh Moohyun, it achieved the rare success that was hard to come across with documentaries. When blacklists were prevalent, Roh Moohyun’s name alone symbolized liberalism's values and the spirit of the times. If the attempt to record historical conflicts is an unchanging constant, then the era is the unexpected variable in documentary filmmaking which utilizes reality as its main ingredient.

OUR PRESIDENT focuses more on Roh Moohyun before becoming president than during his years at the Blue House, the Korean presidential residence. Roh was from Yeongnam, which made him an unlikely liberal. The film spotlights Roh at the 2002 Democratic National Election. The candidate who wishes for the unison of the East and the West witnesses a splendid turnaround feat after much struggle. The film broadly tells this story in two sections. One through archival footage, which symbolizes collective memories, and the other, of present-day memorials from the people who were with Roh during the election. Although the film is about Roh, the main body of the film is composed of the memories of those who miss him and share what he was like or what they did with him. In that sense, OUR PRESIDENT brings back Roh as bits of history flowing in the hearts of individuals rather than what might be commonly known. The film respects him, but not from a perspective of astonishment as a means to demythify. But through solemn music, it reconstructs the success story into a heroic myth. The film satisfies the calling to record the individual who represented an era’s spirit of the times. While focusing on emotions and sensitivity, it walks on a tightrope between demythification and mythicization. Afterward, the film became the foundation for documentaries on Roh that followed. LEE Seungmin

Production FULLFILM (fullfilm0525@gmail.com)
Distribution CJ CGV (cjcgvmaster@cj.net), FULLFILM (fullfilm0525@gmail.com)
International Sales FULLFILM (fullfilm0525@gmail.com)

2018 Wildflower Film Awards Korea Best Documentary Director (Nominee)