You began working on “Old Marine Boy” while finishing up “My Love, Don’t Cross That River.” I’m guessing that was possible because you were confident in the topic. Although breaking a record won’t be easy, I hope and have a desire for the latest film to pull off a good box office performance. But once I completed the documentary, I began to think about all the people who put in effort and helped make the film, like the producers, investors and the cast in particular. In the beginning, I just thought that a film’s box office success is up to fate. Of course it’s not easy for me to ignore what other people say about the film. How do you feel about “Old Marine Boy” heading to the big screen? A. Realizing that Myeong-ho’s motivation to work so hard is his family, the filmmaker captures him as not only a courageous diver, but also as a caring husband and father.Įxcited, yet feeling the pressure to pull off another box office success, the director sat for an interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily last week to discuss the new movie. But he still carries trepidation when he enters the water each day. Having crossed the border from North Korea with his family in 2006, Myeong-ho knows what it is like to be faced with a life-or-death experience. He risks becoming disabled from getting decompression sickness, but Myeong-ho can’t stop because he needs to support his wife and two grown sons. Relying on only a single oxygen line, the job forces him to face the line between life and death everyday. It revolves around a deep-sea diver named Park Myeong-ho, who dives 50 meters (164 feet) into the sea in Gangwon while wearing a 60-kilogram (132.3 pounds) diving suit.
It premiered at the 9th DMZ International Documentary Film Festival held in September and was released in theaters yesterday. In the hopes of breaking his own record, Jin released his second documentary “Old Marine Boy” earlier this year. The documentary, a love story of then-89-year-old Gang Gye-yeol and her 98-year-old husband Jo Byeong-man, captured audiences’ hearts with its honest depiction of the elderly couple’s relationship. In 2014, director Jin Mo-young set a new box office record for a documentary with his debut feature “My Love, Don’t Cross That River,” with 4.8 million tickets sold.
Director Jin Mo-young, who was behind the hit documentary “My Love, Don’t Cross That River,” released “Old Marine Boy,” his first documentary in three years, this week.