Kim Jee-woon was born in 1964 in Seoul. Initially he worked in the theater, first as an actor, then as a director and finally has become one of the most popular and acclaimed figures among modern Korean directors/screenwriters. In 1998, Kim directed and wrote his first feature film, The Quiet Family (1998). His films A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) and A Bittersweet Life (2005) shown considerable growth as a director and stylist vistual and were met with critical acclaim and commercial success. In 2008 he received the award for best director of the Sitges Film Festival for The good, the bad and the weird. In 2010 Kim directed the thriller I Saw the Devil(2010), re-uniting with actors Choi Min-sik and Lee Byung-hun. Kim’s next film was his US debut, featuring the return of Arnold Schwarzenegger to lead acting roles, The Last Stand, for Lionsgate Films.

Set in the late 1920s, The Age of Shadows follows the cat-and-mouse game that unfolds between a group of resistance fighters trying to bring in explosives from Shanghai to destroy key Japanese facilities in Seoul, and Japanese agents trying to stop them. A talented Korean-born Japanese police officer, who was previously in the independence movement himself, is thrown into a dilemma between the demands of his reality and the instinct to support a greater cause.