Director: Byun Sung-hyun
Behind every winning campaign there is someone counting votes no one else is willing to count.
What is Kingmaker about?
Set against South Korea's fraught electoral history, the film follows Seo Chang-dae, a strategist with an unmatched instinct for turning public opinion, who attaches himself to politician Kim Woon-beom's rise. Kim wants to reshape the country through honest reform; Seo is willing to bend almost any rule to get him there. Their partnership works brilliantly at first, campaign after campaign tilting in their favor through tactics equal parts clever and morally slippery. But success changes the terms of the deal: as Kim climbs closer to real power, he starts questioning the methods that put him there, and Seo starts wondering whether the ideals he's been serving were ever the point. The film moves between smoke-filled backrooms and public rallies, tracking how a friendship built on shared ambition curdles once the two men disagree about how far ambition should go.
Cast & crew
Sol Kyung-gu plays Seo Chang-dae, the calculating strategist at the story's center, opposite Lee Sun-kyun as Kim Woon-beom, the politician he builds into a national figure. Jo Woo-jin and Bae Jong-ok round out the supporting cast of allies and rivals swept up in the campaign.
Context & significance
Director Byun Sung-hyun, known for stylized, morally ambiguous thrillers, loosely draws on real chapters of South Korean political history without naming names, using the campaign-trail setting as a lens on how democracies get built and bent at the same time. The film runs just over two hours and premiered in South Korea in 2024.
Where & how to watch
Kingmaker is available to stream on K-Time with Persian dubbing once you sign in with a free account; the page itself can be browsed without logging in. The platform is built around a Farsi-first viewing experience for Persian-speaking audiences.