The Little Drummer Girl

Park Chan-wook — Executive Producer / Director

Park Chan-wook is a Korean film director, screenwriter, producer and former film critic who has emerged as one of the most significant talents in cinema in recent years. He is best known for his films Joint Security Area, Thirst, The Handmaiden and what has become known as The Vengeance Trilogy, consisting of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, and Lady Vengeance. Park's incredibly diverse body of work has garnered recognition in his homeland as well as from a number of leading international film festivals. In 2011, the short film Night Fishing, which he co-directed with his brother, Park Chan-kyong, and shot entirely with an Apple iPhone, won the Golden Bear (Short Film) at the Berlin Film Festival. In 2009 Park received worldwide attention for his vampire thriller Thirst, which earned him the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. This monumental film was the first Korean film ever to secure North American distribution rights and Hollywood studio investment at the production stage. Lady Vengeance was awarded the Cinema Avvenire and Il Leoncino d'Oro awards in competition at the 2005 Venice Film Festival. This was preceded by Oldboy, which won the prestigious Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. Park's interest in film began in college as a philosophy student at Sogang University, where he founded a film club and developed a strong interest in film theory and criticism. His film Joint Security Area became the biggest box office hit in the history of Korean cinema at the time of its release (since then, the record has been surpassed by other films). In 2013, Park's ninth feature and his first English-language film Stoker, starring Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode and Nicole Kidman, was released worldwide by Twentieth Century Fox and Fox Searchlight Pictures to critical acclaim the world over. He is also the producer of the feature film Snowpiercer (2013) directed by Bong Joon-ho, with an international cast including Chris Evans, Song Kang-ho, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, Ewen Bremner and Alison Pill, with John Hurt and Ed Harris. In 2016, he was once again invited to Cannes with The Handmaiden which went on to win the Vulcan Prize. The film, which was inspired by Sarah Waters' historical crime novel Fingersmith (2002), has proven to be a critical and box office success.