Park Chan-wook will preside over the jury of the 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival.
The celebrated South Korean director, screenwriter and producer will succeed French actor Juliette Binoche, whose jury handed the Palme d’Or to Jafar Panahi’s Iranian drama “It Was Just an Accident.”
Known for his baroque and subversive work, Park has a long history with Cannes. He presented his feature debut, “Oldboy,” at the 2004 festival, where it won the Grand Prize and later became a cult film. He’s returned to the competition with most of his films since then, including “Thirst,” which picked up the Jury Prize in 2009, “The Handmaiden” in 2016 and “Decision to Leave,” which won best director in 2022.
“Park Chan-wook’s inventiveness, visual mastery, and penchant for capturing the multiple impulses of women and men with strange destinies have given contemporary cinema some truly memorable moments,” said festival president Iris Knobloch and director Thierry Frémaux in a joint statement. “We are delighted to celebrate his immense talent and, more broadly, the cinema of a country deeply engaged with the questioning of our time.”
Park will become the first South Korean president of the Cannes Film Festival in its 79-year history. Wong Kar-wai is the only other Asian filmmaker to have headed the jury, 20 years ago.
Park, whose latest film “No Other Choice” was nominated for three Golden Globes, said, “The theater is dark so that we may see the light of cinema. We confine ourselves within the theater so that our souls may be liberated through the window of film.
“To be enclosed in a theater to watch films, and enclosed again to engage in debate with the members of the jury, this double, voluntary confinement is something I await with great anticipation,” he continued.
Alluding to ongoing wars and political tensions, he said, “In this age of mutual hatred and division, I believe that the simple act of gathering in a theater to watch a single film together, our breaths and heartbeats aligning, is itself a moving and universal expression of solidarity.”
Cannes has long championed South Korean cinema. Back in 2002, the festival awarded Im Kwon-taek with the best director award for “Strokes of Fire.” Bong Joon-ho became the first Korean director to win the Palme d’Or in 2019 for “Parasite” and then made history winning best picture, director, screenplay and international feature at the Oscars.
Over the years, Cannes also shined a spotlight on a new generation of South Korean directors who presented their films in competition; notably Hong Sang-soo, with “Tale of Cinema” in 2005, Kim Ki-duk with “Breath” in 2007 and Lee Chang-dong with “Poetry,” which won best screenplay in 2010. Others have included Kim Jee-woon with “A Bittersweet Life” in 2005, Yeon Sang-ho in “Train to Busan” in 2016, Byun Sung-hyun with “The Merciless” in 2017 and Lee Won-tae with “The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil” in 2019.