Parasite (Black&White) - English subtitled
Black and white version of Bong Joon-ho’s winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Parasite combines the genres of black comedy and home invasion thriller in a satirical tale about a rich Korean family and a poor one.
A glorious success and smashing box-office hit for Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho – who returns home after his foreign adventures in SNOWPIERCER and OKJA – PARASITE moves quickly from one tone to another, mixing pathos and satire with thrills and drama, in a perfectly controlled blend of many different genres. It starts as a social-realist drama about a poor family struggling to find work in modern-day Seoul. By the end of its 132-minute runtime, it will have cycled through black comedy, social satire, home invasion thriller, and slapstick.
A story of class struggle, PARASITE dissects with surgical precision the life of two families of different social backgrounds. Ki-taek is the unemployed patriarch of a family of derelicts – his wife Chung-sook, his clever daughter Ki-jung, and his son Ki-woo – who live in an overcrowded, sordid basement. The Parks, on the other hand, live in a fabulous house with their teenage daughter Da-hye and terribly spoiled son Da-song. When, due to an unexpected stroke of luck, Ki-woo is hired by the Parks to be the private English tutor of Da-hye, the destinies of the two families cross. Their explosive meeting exposes the merciless evils of class inequalities, culminating in a powerful and utterly original outcome. (source: www.tiff.net)
Director Bong Joon-ho and his cameraman Hong Kyungpyo share a love for classic black and white films, so he presents a special black and white version of Parasite, which premiered at the IFFR. Bong Joon-ho was present at the film festival in Rotterdam, in his own words to watch films. A big compliment for the festival that screened its debut film Barking Dogs Never Bite in 2000. This year the director also gave an inspiring masterclass at the IFFR, which you can look back here.