South Korea’s Park Chan-wook to head Cannes festival jury

PARIS: South Korean filmmaker Park Chan wook, the first from his country to head the Cannes film festival jury, will preside over the 79th edition in May, organisers announced Thursday.

A statement named the director behind “Oldboy” (2003) as president of the body that will award the 2026 Palme d’Or.

Last year the award went to Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s “It Was Just an Accident.”

The appointment, which organisers called “a first for Korean cinema”, came as South Korean culture enjoys global recognition, with Park’s films hailed alongside Bong Joon-ho’s 2019 Palme d’Or and Oscar best picture winning film “Parasite”, the hugely popular television series “Squid Game” and “KPop Demon Hunters” as well as K-pop groups BTS and Blackpink.

“In this age of hatred and division, I believe that the simple act of coming together in a movie theatre to watch a film at the same time… makes it possible to create a moving, universal sense of solidarity,” the statement quoted Park, 62, as saying.

The festival praised his genre-blending cinema as “narrative, stylistic (and) moral”.

Park has long been credited for inspiring a generation of filmmakers behind the “Korean noir” genre – movies about bloody crimes, brutal revenge or the criminal underworld, presented with sumptuous cinematography, including Bong.

The director with a strong appetite for vengeance and redemption – whose violent or erotic films are not afraid to shock – won a best director award at Cannes four years ago for “Decision to Leave”, a romantic thriller.

Lover of literature

Park achieved international stature with “Oldboy”, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2004.

Based on a cult manga, the second instalment of a dark trilogy about revenge tackled social inequalities – a hallmark of Korean cinema.

His latest work, “No Other Choice” (2025), is adapted from Donald Westlake’s 1997 novel “The Ax” and follows an unemployed man who decides to kill his potential competitors to land a job.

It starred South Korea’s top actors – “Squid Game” star Lee Byung-hun and “Crash Landing on You” actress Son Ye-jin – in the lead.

The film touched on contemporary anxieties over artificial intelligence, Park has said, reflecting its broader theme of the job market, including the cinema industry.

“Films can be seen as something that do not necessarily provide any great practical help in life – they might be just two hours of entertainment,” Park said at the Busan International Film Festival last year.

“And yet… I pour everything I have into this work, staking my entire life on it.”

Having studied philosophy at Sogang University in Seoul, the soft-spoken filmmaker is also known as a great lover of literature, especially Emile Zola and Philip Roth.

His 2009 vampire film “Thirst” was an adaptation of Zola’s “Therese Raquin,” and his lesbian romance “The Handmaiden” (2016) is based on the novel “Fingersmith” by the British author Sarah Waters.

Park has also worked extensively in television, notably the English-language mini-series “The Little Drummer Girl”, adapted from John Le Carre’s novel, and last year’s HBO series “The Sympathizer” about a North Vietnamese spy.