{"id":491170,"date":"2026-02-26T07:41:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T07:41:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/491170\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T07:41:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T07:41:06","slug":"park-chan-wook-is-president-of-the-2026-cannes-film-festival-jury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/491170\/","title":{"rendered":"Park Chan-wook Is President of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival Jury"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tPark Chan-wook<\/a> will preside over the jury of the 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The celebrated South Korean director, screenwriter and producer will succeed French actor Juliette Binoche, whose jury handed the Palme d\u2019Or to Jafar Panahi\u2019s Iranian drama \u201cIt Was Just an Accident.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKnown for his baroque and subversive work, Park has a long history with Cannes. He presented his feature debut, \u201cOldboy,\u201d at the 2004 festival, where it won the Grand Prize and later became a cult film. He\u2019s returned to the competition with most of his films since then, including \u201cThirst,\u201d which picked up the Jury Prize in 2009, \u201cThe Handmaiden\u201d in 2016 and \u201cDecision to Leave,\u201d which won best director in 2022.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPark Chan-wook\u2019s 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,\u201d said festival president Iris Knobloch and director Thierry Fr\u00e9maux in a joint statement. \u201cWe are delighted to celebrate his immense talent and, more broadly, the cinema of a country deeply engaged with the questioning of our time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPark 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tPark, whose latest film \u201cNo Other Choice\u201d was nominated for three Golden Globes, said, \u201cThe 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.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTo 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,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlluding to ongoing wars and political tensions, he said, \u201cIn 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cannes has long championed South Korean cinema. Back in 2002, the festival awarded Im Kwon-taek with the best director award for \u201cStrokes of Fire.\u201d Bong Joon-ho became the first Korean director to win the Palme d\u2019Or in 2019 for \u201cParasite\u201d and then made history winning best picture, director, screenplay and international feature at the Oscars.<\/p>\n

\n\tOver 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 \u201cTale of Cinema\u201d in 2005, Kim Ki-duk with \u201cBreath\u201d in 2007 and Lee Chang-dong with \u201cPoetry,\u201d which won best screenplay in 2010. Others have included Kim Jee-woon with \u201cA Bittersweet Life\u201d in 2005, Yeon Sang-ho in \u201cTrain to Busan\u201d in 2016, Byun Sung-hyun with \u201cThe Merciless\u201d in 2017 and Lee Won-tae with \u201cThe Gangster, the Cop, the Devil\u201d in 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Park Chan-wook will preside over the jury of the 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival. The celebrated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[32176,88,43399],"class_list":{"0":"post-491170","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-cannes-film-festival","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-park-chan-wook"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}