SEOUL — At last, U.S. audiences will soon be kidnapped by filmmaker Jang Jun Hwan. But instead of paying a ransom, all you have to prepare is your curiosity and imagination — then you too can be whisked away by his debut feature, “Save the Green Planet.” It has already swept up numerous awards at various international film festivals, and now it will have a limited U.S. theatrical release starting April 20 in New York.

“Save the Green Planet” tells the story of Byeonggu, a mentally unbalanced young man, who kidnaps his former boss, Mr. Kang, with the help of a tightrope walker, Sooni, because Byeonggu believes Mr. Kang is really an alien masquerading as a CEO about to lead an invasion of Earth.

There were high expectations for “SGP” because a short film Jang shot in 1994, called “2001 Imagine,” drew a lot of praise. But its offbeat story of conspiracy theories put off South Korean audiences, and “SGP” bombed badly when it was released in 2003. However, other Korean directors were quick to call “SGP” one of Korea’s best pictures.

So if you’re not afraid of entering a creepy basement filled with naked mannequins, come on down and meet Mr. Jang.

What made you decide to become a director?

I just loved to watch movies. Sometimes, I would lie about going to the library, and then slip into a movie theater. I’ve enjoyed drawing since I was young, and I wanted to major in art in college. However, at my parents’ request, I studied English literature. As a result, I kept searching for something more exciting and interesting. During my search I joined a movie club at school. In this club, I watched and talked about lots of movies, and I got to know about KAFA (the Korean Academy of Film Art).

Would you say that you’ve always had a desire to direct?

I never planned to become a director. I would say that I had a fear of being a director. I thought of directors as being energetic, and I wondered if an introverted person like me could become a director. It was not easy to challenge myself and go beyond my character, but the period at KAFA, I experienced satisfaction from collaborating with colleagues, and the interest that I used to have from drawing. There’s no direct influence between drawing and film in my case. But I can say that constructing frames and angles on the screen is close to drawing.

Where did you get the idea for “Save the Green Planet”?

One day, I watched “Misery,” which was very thrilling. After the movie ended, I felt that something was missing in it. In the movie, the Kathy Bates character was described as a crazy maniac, and that she was just someone for us to run away from. But you know, she might have had her own reasons or desires that made her act the way she did. I wanted to examine her character more closely, as a person who never had a chance to explain her motivations. Later, I happened to visit an “anti-Leonardo DiCaprio” Internet site. People thought that DiCaprio was an alien here to conquer all of the beautiful women on Earth. I found this notion to be quite hilarious (laughs). I came up with the initial idea of “SGP” from these two items.