Dan Kwan

Dan Kwan (birth name: Daniel Kwan) is one member of the director pair known as “Daniels” (with co-director Daniel Scheinert), who has written, produced, and directed two features, after making dozens of music videos since 2010 with such artists as The Hundred in the Hands, Foster the People, Tenacious D., Manchester Orchestra and DJ Snake, whose “Turn Down for What” (starring Kwan himself) achieved viral status.

Kwan’s feature debut with Scheinert was Swiss Army Man (2016), an absurdist comedy starring Daniel Radcliffe and Paul Dano. His follow-up feature (co-directed with 13 other directors handling one segment each, and co-written with 15 other writers) was the loopy Florida-set comedy, Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia (2020), which premiered at the 2020 Sundance film festival. Dan Kwan’s second co-directed feature with Scheinert premiered at the 2022 South by Southwest film festival: the Michelle Yeoh-starring science fiction comedy, Everything Everywhere All at Once, theatrically released shortly after the SXSW premiere. The project had been originally announced in 2017 under the Russo Brothers production banner.

After studying animation at Boston-based Emerson College, Kwan made his first foray into narrative filmmaking in 2009 with the short, Swingers, which he made with Scheinert. The pair followed this with the short, Puppets (2010). Dan Kwan, with Scheinert, then began a prolific career (much of it under the support of Columbia Records) as co-makers of music videos, driven by kooky concepts, flatulence, and narrative drive. Kwan co-founded We Direct Music Videos, an organization of music video directors committed to sustainable labor practices.