Rina Yang

Born to a Korean family,^[2] Yang grew up in Japan. As a creative child, her mother encouraged her to take up still life and portrait painting; she became interested in film at 16.^[3] Yang initially intended to study economics at university, but was inspired to leave Japan at 20 by a friend who lived in England and pursue a creative field. She graduated from the Met Film School with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Practical Filmmaking, awarded by the University of West London.^[4][5]

From 2012 to 2015, Yang began her career doing music videos for a number of folk, rock and electric artists. Her portfolio expanded significantly in 2016 to the likes of Corrine Bailey Rae, Blossoms and FKA Twigs.^[3] This included Raye's music video "I U US" directed by Charli XCX. The following year, Yang reunited with Raye for "You Don't Know Me" with Jax Jones and with FKA Twigs for one of several Nike campaigns Yang worked on.^[6][7] Yang also worked with artists such as Dua Lipa, Zara Larsson, Niall Horan,^[8] and Björk, and Sam Fender across 2017 and 2018.^[9]

Yang was credited with additional photography on the Channel 4 comedy-drama The End of the F***ing World (2017),^[4] marking her first television project, and had her first feature film project as second unit director of photography on the biopic Bohemian Rhapsody (2018).^[10] She earned a BAFTA Cymru nomination for her work on the Through the Gates installment of the anthology On the Edge (2018).

In 2019, Yang worked on three episodes of the Netflix crime drama Top Boy for its third series.^[11] She reunited with FKA Twigs for the music videos "Cellophane" and "Home with You", Charli XCX for "2099" with Troye Sivan, as well as Dua Lipa in 2020 for two tracks with Madonna. Yang filmed Stella Corradi's BBC One film Sitting in Limbo (2020) on the Windrush scandal^[12] as well as Nadia Hallgren's documentary Becoming.

Yang appeared on the British Vogue list of 12 Young Creatives in 2021^[13] and joined the British Society of Cinematographers (BSC) in 2022.^[14] Yang began working with Taylor Swift on All Too Well: The Short Film (2021), earning Yang her MTV VMA nomination.^[15] Yang was invited back for Swift's Midnights music videos the following year and won a VMA for "Anti-Hero". Also in 2022, she gained prominence as cinematographer of an episode of the HBO drama Euphoria and Nikyatu Jusu's psychological horror film Nanny.^[16] Yang further went into film with The Fire Inside (2024),^[17][18] for which she earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination.^[19]

In an interview, Yang named the Coen brothers' Fargo (1996), Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbour Totoro (1988), Yasujirō Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953), and Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express (1994) as some of her favourite films.^[20]

As of 2019, Yang was based in Clapton, East London.^[10]