News

Taking place in April, Bong Joon Ho: Power And Paradox will chart the ascendancy of Korea’s most successful filmmaker as the hotly anticipated Mickey 17 (2025) is released in cinemas including BFI IMAX. Korean cinema can be divided into two eras: before and after the emergence of director Bong Joon Ho.

With films that spanned everyday life and the realms of alternative or futuristic worlds, Bong Joon Ho has balanced critical acclaim with commercial heft. His themes explore power through paradox, where control meets chaos, and humour intertwines with horror, laying bare the intricacy of societal systems; with audiences better positioned to identify the structures of power that his characters appear oblivious to.

Barking Dogs Never Bite

This season, which is presented with the Korean Cultural Centre UK, includes all of Bong’s features: Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000), Memories Of Murder (2003), The Host (2006), Mother (2009), Snowpiercer (2013), Okja (2017) and Parasite (2019), alongside an...

In 2019, IndieWire declared the house in “Parasite” the year’s best set. It tells the story’s principal dynamic between the wealthy and unsuspecting Park family and the poorer Kim family, who infiltrate their beautiful home. Director Bong Joon Ho envisioned the interaction between the two families as a cat-and-mouse game of spying, set in an open-plan house.

This layout allowed him to depict the spatial relationships between rooms using carefully crafted wide shots with great depth of field. Production designer Lee Ha Jun designed his set around Bong’s carefully storyboarded blocking and compositions.

When Bong returned to IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast to talk about his long-awaited sci-fi space expedition film “Mickey 17,” he explained that he adopted a completely different approach to spatial storytelling.

“With the rich house in ‘Parasite,’ it was important to create an illusion for the audience,” said Bong through translator Sharon Choi. “The...

Exclusive: Netflix’s latest original is a Japanese series adaptation of 2011 French film Les Émotifs Anonymes (Romantics Anonymous).

The project, going under the working title of Romantics Anonymous, will feature talent from Japan and Korea — two of the core countries at the center of Netflix’s strategy in Asia. Shun Oguri (Godzilla vs. Kong), Han Hyo-Joo (Moving), Yuri Nakamura and Jin Akanishi have been cast in the series, with Sho Tsukikawa (Yu Yu Hakusho), who’s also known for numerous romantic films, attached to direct.

Yong Film — the Korean producer behind the likes of Believer 2, The Call, 20th Century Girl and My Name is Loh Kiwan — has developed the project as its first Japanese series.

Lee Ha Jun (Parasite) will lead the production design, including the central chocolate boutique set. Yang Jin Mo (Parasite) will serve as editor, and Dalpalan will work on the music. Production has begun ahead of a 2025 debut,...

The house in Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is not real, but a series of sets constructed for the film's production. The house is essential to the story, with more than half of the film taking place there, and its design was carefully planned to enhance the characters' interactions and the themes of infiltration and class divide. The Park's home serves as a visual representation of the story's message, and its design and architectural beauty convinced many that it was a real home.

The Park family home plays an important role in Bong Joon-ho's 2019 film, which may leave viewers wondering if the house from Parasite is real. Parasite was a huge success upon release in 2019, garnering praise for its gripping, layered story and exploration of class divides in South Korea. As a result, Parasite went on to win 197 awards, including multiple Academy Awards. As well as its exemplary writing, however,...

by Cláudio Alves

This year's Oscar nominations weren't particularly rich in surprises, positive or otherwise. Still, there are plenty of things to be ecstatic about like the Best Production Design nomination for Bong Joon-ho's Parasite. It's relatively unusual to see non-anglophone films score nods outside the Best International category and even rarer for the Academy's design branch to recognize excellence in contemporary narratives. Usually, period movies, sci-fi adventures and fantasy extravaganzas are de rigueur choices in these categories. However, the Korean masterpiece turned awards season juggernaut was able to overcome whatever prejudices the Academy might have and score a very deserved nod for the work of production designer Ha-jun Lee and set decorator Won-woo Cho.

With that in mind, let's celebrate this miracle of design, an essential element for a film about class in which social hierarchies are materialized in architecture…...

From the moment of Parasite’s world premiere in Cannes, in which a usually stoic European audience hooted and hollered at Bong Joon-ho’s movie’s twists and turns as though it was a midnight screening in Austin, the film’s trajectory has been breakneck. It would go on to win the Palme d’Or, before traveling to festivals the world over and being greeted by audiences with as much fervor as those first screenings. Now, director Bong is nominated for Best Director at the Globes, and Parasite looks set to break out of the international feature race and into Oscar’s main competition.

Deadline: Is it true that Parasite began as a play?

Bong Joon-ho: It is true that I first conceived of this idea as theater, but from the very beginning, it didn’t work out that way. From the first line, I was already thinking about the camera positions.

The Chicago Indie Critics announced their nominees Saturday for the group’s fourth annual film awards, with Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women leading with eight nominations, including Best Studio Film and Best Director.

Following next with seven nominations each were The Irishman, Marriage Story, 1917, and Parasite.

Winners will be announced on January 4, at the Cards Against Humanity Theater in Chicago. Stand-up comedian and former film critic Katie Baker is set to host the ceremony, which will stream live on YouTube.