Extra Credit: Veteran Q&A with Director Ryoo Seung-Wan

In the Q&A session following the movie, Veteran, director Ryoo Seung-Wan provided
some details about the film and the movie industry as a whole. When asked about the process
and struggles of getting investments for the film after creating prior works that revealed the dark
issues of the society, Director Ryoo expressed that there were no hardships since he had made
hits with his past works and established himself as a popular director. In spite of revealing the
political issues and ugly truths about the mega corporations, he didnt feel any external pressure
in the form of lack of investments. In addition, Director Ryoo was asked about what had inspired
to create a film with an underlying theme of corruption and brutality of the rich. Although he
creates fictional films, Director Ryoo told the audience that he tends to gain inspiration from the
real world and figures. He described that his hands and feet have to work harder to compensate
for his lack of imagination and creativity. Before directing the film itself, he spent great amount
time with real-life detectives to accurately portray the characteristics, speech, and behaviors on
the film screen.
One of the most memorable answers from this Q&A session was when Director Ryoo
answered the question regarding what message he was trying to portray through the film Veteran.
When showing the film to an audience of 200 people, he believes that there are a total 201
different Veterans by the end of the night. By this answer, he meant that each individual
interprets and has different impressions of the movie. Although there are certain message he tries
to explicitly portray, he described that his goal is to open the eyes of the public to certain issues
so that we might be aware and active in figuring out the problem in the society.