Broker: Hirokazu Koreeda, acclaimed Japanese director, on his first Korean film, starring Song Kang-ho, Gang Dong-won and IU

The director and the stars of Cannes winner Broker had often talked about working together, but it was only in 2016 that he came up with the idea for the film

‘It just so happened that the actors I wanted to work with were Korean,’ Kore-eda adds, but the film’s timing, after Squid Game and Parasite, is propitious

4-MIN READ4-MIN

(From left) Gang Dong-won, IU and Song Kang-ho in a still from Broker, Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda’s first Korean film and the winner of two prizes at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.

Published: 4:15pm, 21 Jun 2022Updated: 12:46pm, 28 Feb 2023

Before Hirokazu Koreeda arrived at the Cannes Film Festival this year, he was all too aware that he was the returning hero. The Japanese director’s last film to play there, Shoplifters, won the prestigious Palme d’Or. Now the 60-year-old was back in competition with Broker.

“I hadn’t really felt the pressure until I came here,” he tells the Post in an interview when we meet on the festival’s penultimate day, “and then I got to my hotel and there was a massive banner for my film up.”

Even more disconcertingly, the animated intro that precedes each screening, set to the dreamy Carnival of the Animals by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns as the camera glides up a staircase resembling the steps of the festival’s famous Palais, had been changed in honour of Cannes’ 75th birthday.

On each step was the name of a legendary director – Scorsese, Lynch, Campion, Coppola, Kurosawa et al. “And my name was on there,” he gulps, “and then I really felt the pressure!”

In the end, he needn’t have worried. Typically humane and delicately made, Broker was received rapturously. Kore-eda’s male lead, the brilliant Song Kang-ho, was awarded the best actor prize, and the film claimed the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury.