About Ian Dani Kim
Ian Dani Kim is a 17-year-old filmmaker, writer, and visual artist.
He is an award-winning film director,
the 2024 YoungArts Award Winner with Distinction in Film,
and the 2023 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards
National Gold Medalist in Design.
He has won the 49th Seattle International Film Festival's Wavemaker Award Grand Jury Prize, the 2024 BFI Future Film Festival (UK)'s Best New Talent Special Mention,
the 46th LUCAS – Internationales Festival für junge Filmfans (Germany)' Best Short Film Award in the Teens Section, and the Yale Student Film Festival's Best High School Film Award.
His primary interests are psychology and filmmaking. He has been making films about adolescent psychology and is working on his sixth film.
Fun fact: My middle name, Dani (“dɑːni”), is my Korean name, meaning “the moon.”
Perhaps that's why I’m more creative at night, writing stories and music.
My Story
"Wheelchair! Yes, that will work! We can shoot it in a wheelchair,"
I exclaimed. It was a simple shot of an actor running down the school corridor. Filming it on a tripod would have been easy, but I wanted the camera to follow the actor for a more dynamic effect. Initially, the other crew members were unsure about my idea, but the final result turned out great—slightly shaky but much more engaging than the typical tripod shots. This was during the first film workshop I ever participated in when I was ten years old.
My deep passion for film led me to Bergen County Technical High School-Teterboro, the only public magnet school nearby that offered a film-related major: the Digital Media Arts program. During my time at BT so far, I have learned photography, video and audio editing using software such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects, and more.