Why are Korean films absent from the Cannes Film Festival? A brain drain, Netflix and more

South Korean films are absent from this year’s Cannes Film Festival for the first time in more than a decade, and observers say it highlights a brain drain plaguing the industry. According to the line-up released by the Cannes Film Festival, which runs from May 13 to 24, no Korean films will be screened in its official selection. A short South Korean animated film, Glasses, directed by Jung Yoo-mi, will be screened as part of Critics Week, an event organised by the French Union of Film Critics that runs in parallel with the festival. It is first time since 2013 that no Korean movies have been included in the official selection. It is also the third year in a row that no Korean films will be screened in competition in Cannes. Korean films have been screened regularly at Cannes since 1984, when Lee Doo-yong’s Mulleya Mulleya became the first Korean production to be selected for the festival, and they and their directors have earned strong recognition on the French Riviera. In 2022, Park Chan-wook won the best director award at the festival for Decision to Leave, while Song Kang-ho was named best actor for his role in Broker, a Korean film directed by Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeda. Korean films were also outshone in the Hong Kong International Film Festival held in April; only two, By the Stream and The Land of Morning Calm, were screened, compared with 17 Japanese films. Observers say it is time a new generation of South Korean filmmakers stepped forward. The Korean movies chosen for screening at Cannes have mainly been the work of prominent auteur filmmakers such as Park, Lee Chang-dong and Bong Joon-ho, with young and emerging filmmakers rarely invited to present their work at the festival, according to Jason Bechervaise, an assistant professor at Hanyang University in Seoul specialising in the Korean media and cultural industries. “I personally wish Cannes would look beyond the established auteurs, but it does underscore another problem – the need for the industry to look at the next generation of filmmakers, with studios giving more opportunities to young, talented directors to make new films,” Bechervaise tells the Post. Kim Kyung-hyun, professor and chair of the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of California, Irvine, said: “It is the young group of filmmakers, and audiences who want to watch meaningful films, [that make a difference].” Both tie the decline of the Korean film industry to the growth of streaming platforms, most notably Netflix, which has drawn away numerous directors to work on content that regularly goes viral around the world. One notable example is director Yeon Sang-ho, still best known for his 2016 zombie megahit Train to Busan and its 2020 sequel Peninsula, both of which were selected to premiere at Cannes; the latter’s screening was cancelled because of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the years since, Yeon has directed two drama series (Hellbound, Parasyte: The Grey) and two films (Jung_E, Revelations) – all for Netflix. Korean content was the most watched among non-English-language Netflix programmes in 2023 and 2024. The second season of Squid Game saw 87 million views in its first six days of streaming towards the end of December and was the most popular Netflix programme for the second half of 2024. “In recent years, creators have attempted to develop content targeting global [streaming] platforms, including Netflix,” says Jin Dal-yong, a professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University in Canada. In the case of South Korea, they have become skilled at creating movies in the genres Netflix focuses on, such as zombie dramas, adventure and science fiction, but do not make films that tackle broader issues – including climate change, war and politics – and LGBTQ stories of the sort favoured by movie festivals such as Cannes, he says. “As creators attempt to make commercially driven genre movies, they cannot emphasise dramas that represent people’s struggles and agonies,” Jin says. In contrast to the glory showered on Korean series internationally, the country’s film industry has been suffering from a lack of investment – and profits – since the Covid-19 pandemic, a phenomenon common around the world. Last month the Korean Film Council said the film industry failed to recoup 16.4 per cent of the money invested in making movies in 2024, compared with a profit of 10.9 per cent in 2019. Is a crisis brewing for the Korean film industry? Observers say both opportunity and danger lies ahead. Bechervaise predicts Korean cinemas will screen fewer domestic films in coming years now that a backlog caused by the pandemic has been cleared, because studios are reluctant to finance productions he describes as “no longer the driving force of the industry”. This is in line with the film council’s prediction that between 10 and 14 Korean titles will be released this year compared with 37 in 2024. On the bright side, more films are making a profit – 11 last year, Bechervaise says, compared to 2023, when only six broke even. Moreover, more than half of 2024’s profitable films had production budgets of less than 10 billion won (US$7 million), he says. “Hopefully investors can look beyond the bad headlines and see that actually some films are generating revenue,” he says. For Kim, the fact there are fewer cinema-goers watching Korean films does not make their demise inevitable. “Korean content is still popular worldwide on the streaming platforms and maybe it is a new way of watching films,” he says. “Cinemas might no longer be the dominant mode of watching movies.” Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook

Why are Korean films absent from the Cannes Film Festival? A brain drain, Netflix and more

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}This year’s official selection for the Cannes Film Festival has no Korean movies. Streaming platforms have lured talent away, observers say

This year’s official selection for the Cannes Film Festival has no Korean movies. Streaming platforms have lured talent away, observers say