Korean Director Hong Gets 8th Cannes Invite

Korean director Hong Sang-soo received his eighth invitation to show at Cannes for In Another Country, setting a new Korean record. The film stars Isabelle Huppert, 58, who has had 14 films in official competition at the prestigious film festival and won two Best Actress awards there.

Huppert plays three different women named Anne who each visits a seaside resort, stays at the same small hotel, strolls on the beach and meets the same group of people. The cast also includes co-star Moon Seong-geun and several veterans of Hong films — Yu Jun-Sang, Moon So-ri, Yoon Yeo-jeong and Jeong Yu-mi. This is the first film in which Hong is working with an international star.

Fellow Korean Im Sang-soo (who coincidentally shares the same given and generational names) will join Hong at the 65th Cannes Film Festival with the stylish morality tale The Taste of Money, making this the fourth year in which two Korean films have been chosen for the official competition at the world’s most prestigious film festival. Im’s first Cannes selection was in 2010 for The Housemaid.

Hong, 51, made his Cannes debut in 1998 with The Power of Kangwon Province in the Un Certain Regard category. His other Cannes entries include Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Tale of Cinema and The Day He Arrives. Hong has enjoyed critical acclaim internationally since he made his directorial debut in 1996 with The Day the Pig Fell into the Well.

Cannes opens on May 27 with Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom and closes May 27 with Claude Miller’s Thérèse Desqueyroux.

The Cannes official competition will also include David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis, Walter Salles’ On the Road, Michael Haneke’s Amour, and Abbas Kiarostami’s Like Someone In Love.