Indie auteurs So Yong Kim and Bradley Rust Gray share a deep love for cinema...and one another.

Indie filmmakers So Yong Kim and Bradley Rust Gray are breaking the taboo of never mixing business with pleasure.
Along with being married to one another, the two budding auteurs are married to their movies, and making them has become not just an occupation, but a way of life.

Based out of a small apartment in Brooklyn, N.Y., the couple, who have been married for ten years, produce and direct their own feature films (each has completed two).

Throw in the challenge of raising their 2-year-old daughter, Sky, and you can see how things can get a little hectic.
That Sky instantly recognizes a tripod is no surprise, but the toddler’s taste in film is—her current favorite is director Claire Denis’s arthouse classic, Beau Travail.

 

First Films

 

Unlike their offspring, Kim and Gray were not exposed to film culture growing up. “So studied business, and I studied architecture until we both dropped out to study art,” remarks Gray.

“I don’t think either of us had a clear path into filmmaking,” says Kim. “It seems like we sort of went with our instincts and fell into it.”

After a stint abroad in Iceland, Gray landed at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he met Kim. Their relationship soon blossomed into a deep connection.

“I had a girlfriend, and So had a boyfriend. I thought she was cute, but she didn’t like me,” Gray says playfully, glancing toward Kim. “It’s fine. We’re married, so it worked out.”

After years of studying at various institutions, a gradual shift away from experimental filmmaking and toward a more narrative style, Gray completed his first feature film in 2003, Salt. Shot in Iceland, the film follows a young female factory worker as she slowly falls in love with her sister’s boyfriend and discovers a magical way to escape her situation.

Inspired by her husband, Kim, who served as the producer on Salt, decided to make her own feature, In Between Days. Her film, which is co-written and produced by Gray, is based loosely on Kim’s experiences coming of age as a Korean immigrant in Los Angeles.

Defined by its understated drama, steady pacing and delightfully painful realism, the film was awarded a special jury prize at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.

 

Working Together

 

Recently, both Kim and Gray have finished and exhibited their second features.

Kim’s Treeless Mountain, which recently received a limited national release, earned rave reviews from critics. Also based on Kim’s experiences growing up, the film follows two young girls in Korea as they learn to fend for themselves after their mother leaves them with a neglectful aunt.

After seeing such films as Nobody Knows and Ponette, Kim decided to cast children with no acting experience in the leading roles. The result is a very personal look at the resilience and solidarity of two young siblings.

Just as Gray again played the role of producer for Kim, she played the same role for his second feature, The Exploding Girl. After waiting almost five years to get the go ahead for a different film, Gray used the opportunity to make something more spontaneous.

The result is playfully constructed and follows Ivy, a young college student home for summer vacation, as she juggles two relationships while trying to control her epilepsy.

Comprised of tight close-ups and long exterior shots, the film vacillates between deep intimacy and haunting voyeurism, as the minutiae of daily life is filtered through the character’s perceptions. In the end, Gray’s film is an extremely naturalistic portrait both of a young woman’s internal life and of New York City.

Following a successful theatrical run, Treeless Mountain is being readied for release on DVD. The Exploding Girl were screened at the 2009 Tribeca and Berlin Film Festivals.

Taken together, the couples’ most recent successes seem to suggest that the “SoandBrad”—as they call their joint productions—method is working well.

“It’s something that we both love doing,” notes Kim. “I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

 

 

Biographies

 

So Yong Kim

So Yong Kim started out as a painter and experimental filmmaker. After working with her husband on his narrative films, she decided to make her own. The cinematic worlds she builds for her characters are deeply personal, invoking childhood and adolescent memories, and her experiences growing up as a Korean immigrant. She is currently developing her next script while simultaneously helping to produce her partner’s forthcoming project.

 

Bradley Rust Gray

Unlike his wife’s films, which are based on real life experiences, Bradley Rust Gray enjoys walking in some very different shoes. The female love-struck lead character in Salt, his first feature film, is so sympathetic, complex and fleshed out that it’s hard to believe that the part was written by a man. He has completed two highly realistic yet incredibly lyrical films and a promising script for his forthcoming film Jack and Diane (currently in pre-production).