Coming only three years after the Palme d’Or for “Parasite,” the two Cannes prizes for Park Chan-wook as best director and for Song Kang-ho as best actor are further proof of the strength of Korean cinema’s originality, its elevated skills and its resilience.
Korean movies have been temporarily overshadowed by K-pop and Korean TV dramas – think BTS and “Squid Game” – both of which flourished during the COVID era, while Korean film was struck down by the pandemic.
Closed cinemas and disrupted release schedules meant that the film sector was not fully able to capitalize on the 2019 Cannes and multiple Oscar successes of “Parasite” and “Minari.” Korean film producers’ revenues crumbled between 2020 and early 2022. Talent from in front of and behind the camera shifted across to the more vibrant streaming sector.
The Cannes prize for Park’s “Decision to Leave” is particularly satisfying for a core group of filmmakers, that also includes “Parasite” director Bong Joon Ho, who have engaged with streaming platforms, but see themselves as filmmakers first.
This particularly tight cluster of leading names consists of a group who are friends rather than rivals. While they can be categorized as big-name auteurs with filmographies that make them out as writer-director-producers, the reality is more collegial. Park, his younger brother, Bong and a small circle of other pals grew up supporting each other. And they continue to read each other’s scripts and share notes outside of the formal studio structure.
Saturday’s Cannes wins are also vindication for Korean entertainment giant CJ ENM, which was partly responsible for Korean culture’s modern incarnation, and which has been in the Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon Ho business for more than twenty years.
CJ ENM was a founder investor in DreamWorks SKG in 1995 and then found itself doubling down in the sector as a pioneer distributor in Korea and builder of the country’s first multiplex cinemas.
Having created the distribution capacity and exhibition infrastructure, the company found itself increasingly pulled into production and production finance, needing to keep the feature films flowing, meet the government’s content quotas and industrialize a business that barely existed a decade earlier.
Guided by an idiosyncratic totem, in Miky Lee, CJ ENM has succeeded in that endeavor by trusting auteurs and attuning itself to the high standards demanded by Korean local audiences. It has grown with the talent, as the country’s creative industries emerged from the long shadow of military rule and replaced austerity with the ‘Korean Wave’ and K-cool.
CJ Entertainment was a producer of Park’s 2000 breakout film “Joint Security Area,” and financier of his astonishing 2003 picture “Oldboy,” which won Cannes’ second prize, the Grand Prix. CJ was also aboard Bong’s second title “Barking Dogs Never Bite” in 2000 and his “Memories of Murder” in 2003.
CJ jumped on board when Bong created his futuristic “Snowpiercer” train ride in 2013. It was one of the most expensive Korean films of all times and the company had to stretch itself financially to accommodate.
Guided by the success of the English-language “Snowpiercer series,” which is now in its fourth season, CJ ENM has growing ambitions in the international TV business. In the last two years it has invested in Skydance Media and Endeavor Content.
But it must surely have been just as satisfying, mid way through the Cannes Market, for CJ to be able to announce record levels of rights sales for its two feature films in competition: “Decision” (191 territories) and “Broker” (171 territories).
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