Born as Ma Nan in Shanghai, Johnny immigrated to Toronto, Canada, at the age of ten.

He has gained worldwide recognition for his work as a writer and director of award-winning feature films and shorts. His third feature film, THE MOTHER AND THE BEAR, had its world premiere at TIFF 2024. The charming comedy follows Sara (Kim Ho-jung), a Korean mother who travels to Winnipeg, Canada, for the first time. The circumstances of the visit are not quite opportune – her daughter has fallen into a deep coma, the biting Winnipeg winter seeps into her bones, and worst of all, there seems to be no real Korean food wherever she goes. As Sara learns to adjust to this foreign land without family, she stumbles upon a handsome Korean boy and his father, a restaurateur (Lee Won-jae). Before she knows it, Sara is on dating apps, supposedly for her daughter’s sake.

Typical of Ma’s work, it is full of heart, edgy, and intelligent humour.

Johnny, a film program graduate at Columbia University in New York, is an alumnus of the Sundance Institute Screenwriting and Director’s Lab and the Venice Biennale College Lab. In 2013, Ma’s short film A GRAND CANAL led him back to China to reinterpret childhood memories, recalling the life of a late father through the narration of his son. He lovingly calls the film, which premiered on Vimeo Staff Picks, a ‘Greek tragedy told in a 90s pop song’.

Johnny’s debut feature was the superb psychological thriller OLD STONE, which premiered in Berlin in 2016 and was awarded Best Canadian First Feature Award at the Toronto International Film Festival and again at the Canadian Screen Awards (Canadian Academy). His follow-up, TO LIVE TO SING, premiered at the Director’s Fortnight in Cannes 2019 and won numerous awards in his home country of China. It tells the story of a small Sichuan Opera troupe living and performing together in a rundown theatre on the outskirts of Chengdu, China. All the actors in the film are opera singers and musicians playing versions of themselves, which makes for a rich viewing experience.

Ma often works with non-actors and blends documentary approaches into shooting his carefully scripted scenes. Seamlessly switching from Mandarin to English and recently Korean, one thing is certain: Ma’s work has never been lost in translation.