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South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook has been named as president of the jury for the 79th Cannes Film Festival, which will run from 12-23 May.
The director of Oldboy, Stoker, The Handmaiden and No Other Choice is the first Korean, and the third Asian Cannes jury president, after Japan’s Tetsurō Furukaki in 1962 and Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai in 2006.
“Park Chan-wook’s 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,” said festival President Iris Knobloch and Director Thierry Frémaux.
“We are delighted to celebrate his immense talent and, more broadly, the cinema of a country deeply engaged with the questioning of our time.”
Director Park has previously premiered four films in Competition in Cannes: Oldboy in 2004 – which won the Grand Jury Prize – Thirst in 2009 – which won the Jury Prize – The Handmaiden in 2016 and Decision to Leave in 2022, for which he won best director.
Responding to the announcement, Park said: “The 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. To 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.”
“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.”
Park follows Juliette Binoche, who presided over the 2025 jury which awarded Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just An Accident with the Palme d’Or.
The 79th Cannes Film Festival will take place from 12-23 May 2026. The Official Selection will be unveiled mid-April.