| Birth Date: | 1966 | ||||||||
| Birth Place: | Busan, South Korea | ||||||||
| Birth Name: | Cho Sung-Hyung | ||||||||
| Occupation: | Director, editor, film maker and professor | ||||||||
| Years Active: | 1990–present | ||||||||
| Known For: | Full Metal Village | ||||||||
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Cho Sung-hyung is a German film maker, director, editor and professor living and working in Germany with South Korean roots. She got German citizenship in 2011 for her documentary My Brothers and Sisters in the North.
Cho was born 1966 in Busan, and grew up in Seoul. When she was five years old, her mother moved to West Germany, where she worked as a nurse. Cho received a BA in Mass Communications Studies from Yonsei University. In 1990, Cho moved to Marburg in Germany to pursue an MA in art history, media studies and philosophy at the University of Marburg. She continued with post-graduate studies in Theater Film and Media Sciences at Goethe University Frankfurt and a course in electronic images at Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach am Main.[1]
Between 2004 and 2007, she had taught Editoring, Documentary and Dramaturgy at SAE Institute and was between 2008 and 2009, an assistant lecturer at the Technical University of Darmstadt; in 2010 as an assistant professor. Since 2011, Cho teaches as a regular professor The Art of Film/Movie Making at the University for Visual Arts of Saar in Saarbrücken, Germany.[2]
She worked as a freelance editor and led editing seminars at the Filmhaus Frankfurt and SAE Institute. She also directed documentaries and music videos. Since 2018, she has been a member of the jury of the Federal Festival of Young Film at St. Ingbert.[3]
Cho was an assistant editor for the German television series Ein Fall für zwei, also working on documentaries and music videos. Her documentary Full Metal Village received the Hessian Film Award in 2006 and the Max Ophüls Prize and was named best documentary by the Guild of German Art House Cinemas in 2007.[1]
In 2016, Cho had filmed and was starring in the documentary Meine Brüder und Schwestern in Nordkorea – other international titles: Meine Brüder und Schwestern im Norden, My Brothers and Sisters in the North. She was the first South Korean director who was allowed to visit North Korea after Korean War without being charged for treason by South Korea, because she has a German passport. She gave up South Korean citizenship and took the German one just for making this documentary and getting a visa and the permission of shooting from North Korea.[4]