🎬 The Hand That Once Received Now Bestows — Woody Magazine, Apr. 26, 2026
The Hand That Once Received Now Bestows
Two weeks to Cannes — Park Chan-wook becomes the first Korean filmmaker to decide the Palme d'Or
● Curated & Analyzed by Claude AI ```On May 12, the 79th Cannes Film Festival opens. That is exactly two weeks from today. Presiding over the main competition jury will be Park Chan-wook — the first Korean filmmaker ever to hold that position.
```The list of past Cannes jury presidents reads like a compressed history of world cinema: Spielberg, Scorsese, the Coen Brothers, Robert De Niro, Wong Kar-wai. A Korean name had never appeared on it — until now. Bong Joon-ho, director of the Palme d'Or-winning Parasite (2019), once chaired the Caméra d'Or jury in 2011, which awards the best debut feature. But the main competition — the body that selects the Palme d'Or — is Park's domain for the first time. It also marks the first Asian filmmaker to hold the role since Wong Kar-wai in 2006, twenty years ago.
Park's relationship with Cannes has been long, distinguished, and, in one famous respect, just short of complete. In 2004, Oldboy — the second installment of his "Vengeance Trilogy" — competed under jury president Quentin Tarantino, who reportedly pushed hard for the Palme d'Or. The jury settled on the Grand Prix instead, a compromise that has since passed into Cannes lore. Park returned in 2009 to win the Jury Prize for Thirst, a vampire film steeped in Catholic guilt, and again in 2022 to take Best Director for Decision to Leave, a melancholy noir set against the mountains of South Korea. Korean cinephiles have long called him "Cannes Park" — three major prizes, every honor but the highest one.
The jury presidency is not an honorary title. Over eleven days, Park and his eight or nine fellow jurors will screen roughly twenty-one films in competition — two or three per day — then argue their way to a single Palme d'Or. Park's filmography has been built on formally rigorous compositions, morally ambiguous characters, and a dark wit that disarms even as it unsettles. What kind of film will move him from the other side of the table is genuinely hard to predict. That unpredictability is part of what makes his appointment interesting.
One broader point is worth noting. Park's individual achievement is not the same thing as the health of the Korean film industry. The constellation of milestones — Bong's Palme d'Or, Song Kang-ho's Best Actor prize at Cannes 2022 for Broker, Park's jury presidency — glitters impressively. Yet South Korean cinema has been slow to recover commercially since the pandemic, and the pipeline for emerging directors reaching Cannes remains narrow. The question of whether Korean cinema's run of peak-level achievements represents one generation of exceptional individuals, or signals a self-renewing industry, remains open.
On May 23, the closing night of the 79th Cannes Film Festival, Park Chan-wook will stand on that stage again. This time, he will not be receiving a trophy. He will be the one who decides who does.
- Festival de Cannes — Park Chan-wook, President of the Jury of the 79th Festival (Feb. 26, 2026)
- The Korea Times — Park Chan-wook named 1st Korean to head Cannes jury (Feb. 26, 2026)
- Variety — Cannes Film Festival 2026 Lineup (Apr. 9, 2026)
- Screen Daily — Cannes Film Festival unveils 2026 Official Selection (Apr. 9, 2026)
- KOFIC — The Return of 'Cannes Park': What Park Chan-wook's Appointment Means
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