Riga (AFP)

South Korean director Kim Ki-duk, world renowned for his works steeped in violence but also accused of abusing actresses, died Thursday of COVID-19 in Latvia at the age of 59.

Kim Ki-duk has gained worldwide fame for drawing a daring portrayal of extreme violence and human brutality in allegory-rich films, but he has also been accused of misconduct against actresses.

The director has never responded to these accusations.

In 2012, he won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival for "Pieta" or the Silver Bear in Berlin for "Samaria" in 2004.

“Unfortunately, the sad news of Kim Ki-duk's death from coronavirus in Latvia is true,” Dita Rietuma, head of the Latvian National Cinema Center, told AFP.

"We know from people with whom he had kept in contact that he died in a hospital in Riga around 1:30 in the morning", she added, without being able to provide further details.

According to Ms Rietuma, the Korean director was on a private visit to Latvia and no filming was planned there.

- Self-taught -

According to local media, he planned to buy a property in Latvia and apply for a certificate of residence in this Baltic country, a member of the euro zone.

Estonian-based producer Artur Veeber told AFP the two are working on a new project and Kim Ki-duk is due to return to Estonia in mid-December for a retrospective on his 60th birthday.

The director died nine days before his birthday.

"I learned yesterday that the situation was critical," he added, referring to the director's state of health.

Coming from a modest background, son of a Korean War veteran with violent impulses, Kim Ki-duk had abandoned his studies at the age of 14 to go to work in a factory, a situation which he explained to him for a long time. "a deep sense of inferiority".

After military service in the Korean Marine Corps and a one-year stay in France, he was self-taught in cinema.

His films, many of which feature scenes of violence against both men and women, or show rapes of women, have divided audiences, with some accusing him of misogyny and others praising his creation and portraying him. 'a social environment rarely seen in cinema.

He has directed more than 20 films including "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter ... and Spring", an unusually serene film that explores the cycle of life through the existence of a Buddhist monk.

- "Sexual predator" -

In 2017, an actress who requested anonymity accused him of sexual and physical abuse while filming "Moebius", claiming that he had slapped her and forced her to film nude and sexual scenes. that were not in the script.

The prosecution had dismissed the accusations of sexual abuse, citing the lack of evidence.

But the filmmaker was fined five million won (4,000 euros) for physical assault after a procedure to settle minor cases without going through the trial box.

In March 2019, he lodged a complaint against Womenlink, an influential association for the defense of women's rights in Seoul, which he accused of having "unfairly stigmatized as a sexual predator", causing him financial damage, some of them its films having been deprived of distributors in South Korea and abroad for this reason.

In recent years, Kim Ki-duk traveled to Russia and other ex-Soviet countries where he was working on new projects.

In 2019, he chaired the main jury of the Moscow International Film Festival and presented his latest film "Dissolve" in Kazakhstan.

Russian film critic Andrei Plakhov stressed that this "enfant terrible" of Asian cinema was appreciated in Russia for "his passion and his flippant attitude".

"Kim's films are modern myths," he told Russian newspaper Kommersant.

“There is always temptation and redemption. And there is also God who observes tragedy and human comedy,” he added, describing the filmmaker's universe.

Another Russian critic, Anton Doline, noted on the news site Meduza that for Europe and the United States, Kim embodied "extreme Asia".

Russian television praised his work, stressing that for him there were "no taboos in the study of human nature".

© 2020 AFP