Korean auteur Na Hong-jin is finally headed back to Cannes. A decade after his visceral supernatural freakout The Wailing wowed festivalgoers, the genre mercenary is set to return to the Croisette this May with the long-gestating sci-fi thriller Hope, his first film in the event’s main competition.
Hope was among the 21-title competition lineup unveiled Thursday by Cannes artistic director Thierry Fremaux at the festival’s annual press conference in Paris.
Teasing the project briefly for the assembled press corps, Fremaux said Hope runs “over two hours” and “constantly changes genres” while unfurling a story that’s “no part of history that’s ever been told before.”
Hope, notably, is also Na’s first film told partially in English with a mixed Korean and Hollywood cast. It pairs Korean stars Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung and Squid Game‘s Jung Ho-yeon with Oscar-winning couple Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander, as well as Bones and All‘s Taylor Russell and Mindhunter‘s Cameron Britton.
According to the film’s official logline, the story begins when police chief Bum-seok, played by Hwang, receives unsettling news from local youths that a tiger has appeared in the hills, a report that erupts into village-wide panic and soon escalates into something far stranger. The story is said to be set in a remote harbor village near Korea’s Demilitarized Zone. At home in Korea, the film has been dubbed Na’s most ambitious film to date.
The director has said the entire project grew from a single image that came to him while eating in a restaurant in Seoul sometime in 2017. Hope was shot by the locally revered Korean cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo, known for his work on Parasite, Burning and The Wailing.
Na has steadily climbed the ranks at Cannes to become one of the event’s favored filmmakers from East Asia. Each of his four features has premiered at the festival. His 2008 debut The Chaser played in Midnight Screenings, the follow-up The Yellow Sea landed in Un Certain Regard in 2011, and The Wailing premiered Out of Competition in 2016.
An unforgettable supernatural thriller that grossed some $50 million worldwide off a reported $6 million budget, The Wailing arguably cemented Na’s reputation as one of the most distinctive genre voices working anywhere. His long-awaited follow-up, which he has been developing and producing for the last decade, reportedly carries one of the biggest budgets ever committed to a Korean feature — with some estimates pegging production costs north of $50 million.
“It is an honor,” Na said in a brief statement released Thursday in response to his film’s Cannes selection, adding, “I will continue to work hard in the time ahead.”
Hope is produced by Na’s Forged Films and co-produced and distributed by Plus M Entertainment, the distribution arm of Korean multiplex chain Megabox, with Westworld also co-producing. Plus M is handling international sales, with UTA Independent Film Group partnering on the sale of North American rights. The film is set for a summer theatrical release in Korea.
Hope is the first Korean title to enter Cannes’ main competition in four years, following Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave in 2022. Park will be among those judging his compatriot’s entry, as the Korean maestro was named Cannes’ 2026 jury president earlier this year.
