Kyong Ran recalls one of her teachers during acting school, Antonio Alonzo, who really sharpened her way to observe the world. ”We got all kinds of crazy homework, acting out scenes on the subway, mimicking the body language of the person walking ahead of us to school…,” she says. ”The purpose was to find character traits for acting, but I’ve brought that mindset into my trade as a director. Trying to figure out what it is it that make people feel natural and what makes an actor truly transform into another person.”

In recent years, Kyong Ran has increasingly focused on the development of her own narrative projects between her commercial work. Such as her short film English, please about her interrogation by the Tokyo police, See me which is a series of short films about sexual harassment and rape, Mara, a feature film about people with exhaustion syndrome and her upcoming short film No man’s land, depicting a dying man’s last day in life.

Whether it is on a march through the city with her favorite soundtrack, working with her team on the last details of the film, or writing a new script, Kyong Ran finds energy and inspiration from the variation of her work. ”No day is the same,” she says. ”Some days I’m surrounded by a huge crew, visiting odd places and meeting new people –– and some days it’s just me in a cafe, watching the world turn to while writing one of my own in my head.” Photography and video by Christopher Hunt Words by Jonna Dagliden Hunt