The South Korean cinema industry added to a global winning streak on Saturday by scooping two key prizes at the Cannes Film Festival for a pair of beloved veterans.
Star film-maker Park Chan-wook clinched the best director award for his erotic crime movie ‘Decision To Leave’ while Song Kang-ho, best known for his role in the Oscar-winning ‘Parasite’, picked up the best actor gong for ‘Broker’.
The Cannes spotlight also fell on Lee Jung-jae, the superstar actor in Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’, whose debut as a director, ‘Hunt’, screened out of competition.
Park’s Cannes entry came nearly two decades after his ‘Oldboy’ which won the festival’s second-highest prize in 2004.
That mind-bending shocker helped catapult South Korean cinema onto the global stage — years before ‘Parasite’, which won the 2019 Palme d’Or and best picture at the 2020 Academy Awards.