South Korean director, screenwriter and producer Park Chan-wook will preside over the Jury for Feature Films in Competition at the 79th Festival de Cannes – in a first for Korean cinema.
On Saturday 23 May, on the stage of the Grand Théâtre Lumière, Chan-wook and his jury will award the 2026 Palme d’Or as the successor to last year’s, presented by Juliette Binoche to Iran’s Jafar Panahi for It was Just an Accident.
“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.”
Chan-wook has had plenty of success at Cannes himself – with Old Boy winning the Grand Prix in 2004.
Since then, almost all of his films selected for the Competition have earned him awards, including Thirst (Jury Prize 2009), The Handmaiden (2016) and Decision to Leave (Best Director 2022).
His presence at the Palais des Festivals “testifies to the mutual loyalty that exists between Park Chan-wook and the Festival de Cannes”, organisers said.
“Park Chan-wook’s presidency symbolises the festival’s early and deep attachment to Korean cinema, whose creativity has been revealed by the Official Selection,” a press release continued.
“Korea is a great filmmaking country whose treasures are being restored year after year; it has shown that it can produce major contemporary works that attract millions of theatregoers in a space that celebrates its filmmakers.”
A few months before the 79th festival, future president Park Chan-wook said: “The theatre is dark so that we may see the light of cinema. We confine ourselves within the theatre so that our souls may be liberated through the window of film.
“To be enclosed in a theatre 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 theatre to watch a single film together, our breaths and heartbeats aligning, is itself a moving and universal expression of solidarity.”
This year’s Festival de Cannes runs from 12 to 23 May 2026.
