Interview with Park Chan-wook
Thursday / October 1, 2026
About Park Chan-wook
South Korean director and screenwriter known for Oldboy, The Handmaiden and Decision to Leave, which won him Best Director at Cannes.
Source: BAFTA Guru on YouTube
These answers are taken from Park Chan-wook | BAFTA Screenwriters' Lecture Series on BAFTA Guru's YouTube channel. You! Backstage did not conduct this interview.
What was a great moment for you as a filmmaker?
Adapting Oldboy. I sat down and talked to my producer about why this villain would incarcerate the protagonist for such a long time, but we just couldn't come up with an answer. I took a moment to go to the toilet, and while I was doing my business, facing this white wall, a thought came to me. Why did he let him go? Wouldn't it be more of a punishment to keep him locked up until the day he died? But then it occurred to me: maybe the releasing part is the more important part for this villain. Everyone is obsessed with the question, “Why is he locked up?” But maybe the more important question is, “Why is he released?” And if I change the question around, a new path might present itself.
Then, why after 15 years? Fifteen years might be long enough for someone to grow into an adult. Could it be the daughter? And this train of thought led to the reveal that you see in the film. Doing that business doesn't take a whole lot of time, but in that time, this train of thought led me to this destination. Right after that I rushed to the producer and told him everything.
What advice do you have for new filmmakers?
When you are writing all by yourself, you can fall into the trap of being so obsessed with your own work and so stubborn about what you are writing, following only that single path, and you go into self-contentment and self-praise. That is something you should really be cautious against. It doesn't matter who it is, as long as you have someone next to you that you can talk to and say, “I can go this way or that. Which way is better?” And someone who can read what you've written and say, “This is a bit too weird, isn't it?” I don't require somebody who gives me good ideas. I don't agree with the idea that compromise is in any way the enemy of art.
And once you have decided to tell a story with a certain element in it, you have to do a proper job of it. When the audience sees the completed film, it has to feel as if, right from the get-go, the film was all about that. In order to get the right answer, you have to ask the right question.
Think about a demanding producer, actor or crew member. What made them difficult, and how did you work with them successfully?
At the very beginning, the idea for this short film was, because the river is very near the North and South Korean border, to have a North Korean soldier's corpse float down the river, and it's fished out by the fisherman, and they get all tangled up in these fishing lines and do a dance, as a metaphor for the wish for the two Koreas to be united. But the telecommunications company who suggested that this film be shot on an iPhone, and who funded this short film, there's no way they were going to like this idea. This is still a subject matter that is quite sensitive in commercial film in Korea.
If I was to abuse my position in the industry in Korea and say, “I'm going to do whatever I want, you guys can just go away,” I may have been able to do that. But I don't think anything must be the way it is. The world of art is so vast, and it promises so many different possibilities. It's just a matter of being able to find another thread of possibility. So it was our efforts to come up with different ideas that ended up with what you see on screen. I believe it ended up being a better film.
Describe your filmmaking style.
Visual style, including sound, all of these elements which together form what I might call the cinematic form, all have to serve the story. But that's not to say that content is more important than form. Once an expression is made through form, you should no longer be able to separate the form and the content.
In my first film, which I'm very embarrassed by, there's a female singer working at a bar, and there are POV shots of the good guy and the bad guy watching her. For the gangster, I used a zoom. The way I think about a zoom is that it grabs a subject and brings it to you. He wants to have her, make her his. The other guy is the more devoted type. He would go to her, he would run to her. That's why for him I used tracks and pushed in on the dolly. Some people might ask, “Who in the audience will notice these subtle differences?” But I think every little difference like that creates a difference in perception for the audience.
Tell me something I may not know from reading your filmography.
The team name, Parking Chance, actually comes from our names. My name is Park Chan-wook, and my brother's name is Park Chan-kyong. We share the family name Park, and the first syllable of our names happens to be Chan. When we were both university students, I suggested to him, “Let's make films together, be like the Coen Brothers.” He flat out said no and left to study art. As we grew older he said, “Well, I actually want to make films.” The idea behind this team is to be light-footed and agile, all about guerrilla filmmaking, ready to try out anything new. Under this banner we have done short films, a documentary and a music video.
Our parents are both Catholics, and we were raised as Catholics, so until our high school years we would go to church every Sunday. We both stopped being Catholics after high school. But that childhood experience had a decisive influence on my making Thirst.
What are some of your professional goals for the future?
I do have the Korean audience in mind as a primary audience when I'm making these films. But I consider myself to be making films for the future Korean audience. If you're a filmmaker, you'll understand what I'm saying: we want to make films that will stand the test of time, so that in 50 years' time or 100 years' time, they will be screened at a place like the BFI or BAFTA and the audience will enjoy them then too. So I tell myself I'm going to make films that the future Korean audience can also enjoy. It just happens that the international audience doesn't have trouble enjoying them either.
When you are aspiring to universality like this, not being entrenched in or focused on the current trends, you are able to think outside of that, and you expand yourself as well.
Park Chan-wook's Full Biography
Park Chan-wook is a world-renowned South Korean film director, screenwriter, producer, and former film critic. He is widely considered one of the most prominent architects of modern South Korean cinema's global explosion. Known for his impeccable framing, dark humor, and extreme themes, Park crafts visually stunning thrillers that explore the deep complexities of human guilt, vengeance, and redemption.
He achieved monumental international fame with his "Vengeance Trilogy," consisting of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), Oldboy (2003), and Lady Vengeance (2005). Oldboy won the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, earning high praise from jury president Quentin Tarantino and cementing Park's status as a global auteur. His creative footprint on the horror genre includes directing the intense psychological segment "Cut" for the pan-Asian anthology Three... Extremes (2004) and the stylistic vampire film Thirst (2009).
Park successfully transitioned into English-language cinema with the psychological thriller Stoker (2013). He followed this with the BAFTA-winning erotic thriller The Handmaiden (2016) and the romantic mystery Decision to Leave (2022), the latter earning him the Best Director award at Cannes. Beyond feature films, he has expanded his narrative reach into television, directing the BBC miniseries The Little Drummer Girl (2018) and co-creating the HBO series The Sympathizer (2024).