Charles Yi

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Charles Yi was born and raised in Torrance, California. He started making movies with his father's camcorder at the age of nine. Although these first productions were small affairs involving friends and family, it was apparent early on that Charles had a passion for directing. Unfortunately, all of the movies that he made up to age 16 were stolen from his house during a robbery.

Charles moved to San Francisco and enrolled in the cinema program at San Francisco State University in 1999. Charles even used film in some of his other classes, coming to agreements with the teachers to make short films for projects. One such project, Always Running: Chapter 6, was done in replacement of a book report. The author of the book, Luis Rodriguez, has referenced and made a link to Charles’ adaptation from his website.

After graduating with a BA in Cinema in 2004, he returned to Torrance.

Charles’ short film Nice Guys Finish Last was shown at the Los Angeles Korean International Film Festival (2006) and Traffic in the Sky screened at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (2007) and the San Diego Asian Film Festival (2007). Traffic In The Sky also received distribution in Japan, an extremely rare thing for short films. More recently, Charles received the “True To John Woo Short Film Contest” Grand Prize for his film Return. Director John Woo himself selected it as the winner.