South Korean director Park Chan-wook to preside 2026 Cannes film festival

The Cannes film festival has appointed South Korean filmmaker Park Chan‑wook as president of the jury for the 79th edition of the Cannes film festival, a move that organisers say is “a first for Korean cinema”.

Park's work “embodies the DNA of contemporary Korean cinema in every way”, the festival organisers wrote in a statement, which praised South Koreaa as “a great film-making country”.

Park's presidency “symbolises the Festival's early and deep attachment to Korean cinema”.

'Baroque' cinema

The director, who gained international stature with "Oldboy", which won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2004, served on the jury in 2017.

“Visceral, subversive and baroque, Park Chan-wook's films are bold in every way – in script, in style and in morality,” the festival wrote.

He is drawn to themes of vengeance and redemption, and he has been credited for inspiring "Korean noir" filmmakers, who make movies about bloody crimes, brutal revenge or the criminal underworld, presented with sumptuous cinematography.

These include Bong Joon-ho, whose 2019 film Parasite won the 2019 Palme d'Or and Oscar for best picture.

Literary inspirations

Known as a great lover of literature, several of Park's 12 feature films are adaptations of books. He 2009 vampire film Thirst was an adaptation of Emile Zola's Therese Raquin, and the 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.

Park's latest work, No Other Choice (2025), stars top South Korea's top actors, including Lee Byung-hun, known from the hit television series Squid Game, and Son Ye-jin.

An adaptation of Donald Westlake's 1997 novel The Ax, the film follows an unemployed man who decides to kill his potential competitors to land a job, and touches on anxieties over artificial intelligence in the job market.

Bringing people together

The Cannes festival quoted Park as praising “the light of cinema”.

“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,” he said.

Park and the jury will award the 2026 Palme d'Or at the end of the festival, which runs from 12- 23 May.

(with newswires)