Na Hong-jin’s ‘Hope’ Earns Standing Ovation at Cannes

Ten years is a long time to wait. But when Na Hong-jin finally brought Hope (호프) to Cannes, the response left little doubt the decade-long silence had been worthwhile. On May 17, 2026, the Grand Théâtre Lumière erupted in a long standing ovation as Na Hong-jin's alien invasion thriller screened for the first time anywhere in the world — a moment that has already been called one of the defining events of the 79th Cannes Film Festival.

It is the director's fourth Cannes appearance and, crucially, his first time competing for the Palme d'Or. His earlier films — The Chaser (2008), The Yellow Sea (2011), and The Wailing (2016) — each made it to the festival in various sections but never entered the Competition. Now, with a film that pairs South Korea's most bankable stars with Hollywood talent and sets them against an alien force in one of the most geopolitically charged landscapes on Earth, Na Hong-jin has engineered his most ambitious, most entertaining, and most globally minded film yet.

An Alien Invasion in the Korean DMZ — And the Reviews Are Electrifying

Critics who watched Hope at the Grand Théâtre Lumière emerged buzzing. The Hollywood Reporter called it "Na Hong-jin's wildly entertaining Korean monster epic," while Screen Daily described it as "a thunderously entertaining genre mash-up" and "a superbly sustained pedal-to-the-metal experience that is almost dizzying in its bravura." Deadline's coverage dubbed it a "Cannes crowd-pleaser" and revealed that Na Hong-jin drew inspiration from Jaws and Lethal Weapon while developing the film. On Screen's prestigious jury grid — a composite of critics' scores from participating publications — Hope quickly placed itself among the festival's highest-rated films.

What is Hope actually about? The film is set in Hopohang (호포항), a small harbor village in South Korea's Demilitarized Zone — the narrow strip of land separating North and South Korea that has fascinated and haunted the Korean imagination for decades. Hwang Jung-min plays Bum-seok, the village's border patrol chief, who is alerted by a group of rowdy young men led by Seong-gi (Jo In-sung) that a tiger has been spotted nearby. What Bum-seok encounters in the dark, however, is something far beyond any earthly predator.

The film's first hour is, by most accounts, an adrenaline-driven chase sequence that turns into what critics describe as "an insane mix of relentless action, mad sci-fi, gore, and goofy humor." Na Hong-jin's signature genre-blending — already evident in the supernatural horror of The Wailing — operates here on an even grander scale. The creatures attacking Hopohang are eventually revealed to be extraterrestrial beings, played by Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, and Taylor Russell.

Korea Meets Hollywood: A Cast Like No Other in Korean Cinema

Hope represents something genuinely unprecedented in Korean filmmaking: a film that integrates Korean and Hollywood talent not as a novelty but as a structural necessity. To portray the alien beings, Na Hong-jin enlisted three of international cinema's most compelling performers.

Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander — real-life husband and wife and both Academy Award winners — star as alien beings described in the film as members of a civilized species. Vikander has revealed that her relationship with Korean cinema runs deep: her first film festival experience was at the Busan International Film Festival, where she fell completely in love with Na Hong-jin's work after watching The Chaser, The Yellow Sea, and The Wailing. "When he reached out about playing an alien in his new film, I didn't need to think twice," she said at the Cannes press conference. Taylor Russell, the rising Canadian actress known for Bones and All, described the casting as "beyond my dreams."

For the Korean cast, the production offered its own distinct challenges. Hwang Jung-min — whose cumulative domestic box office stands at over 27 million viewers and who remains the gold standard of Korean commercial cinema — described performing against non-human opponents with characteristic directness. "Physically, it wasn't hard," he said. "What mattered was summoning my best imagination as an actor and channeling pure energy. I acted as if something unknown was pursuing me — and that made it exciting rather than difficult."

Jo In-sung, one of Korea's most sought-after leading men, offered a more introspective take: "Creating something new requires courage. I had courage, but the emotional difficulty was real. How do you convey that kind of primal fear? How do you show a human being's will to survive? That was what I focused on."

Perhaps the most poignant presence at Cannes, however, was Jung Ho-yeon — the model turned global star who captivated audiences worldwide as Kang Sae-byeok in Netflix's Squid Game. Hope marks her first feature film appearance. "This is my first film," she said quietly after the premiere. "Standing in that enormous theater, seeing myself on screen for the first time — I still cannot find the words. My first thought was: thank you, Director Na."

Na Hong-jin on the Film's Origins: A World That Felt Ominous

Where does one go after making a film as singular as The Wailing? If you are Na Hong-jin, apparently you go to outer space — but only after spending years processing what it means to live on a planet that feels increasingly hostile.

"I felt an ominousness about the world," the director explained in interviews at the Majestic Barrière hotel in Cannes. "Wars about to break out, tremendous violence threatening to overwhelm everything — I sensed it everywhere. Hope asks how problems, violence, and terrible things arise and how far they can grow. Can they really escalate to this degree? Yes, I believe they can."

That philosophical starting point led to seven years of alien character development, with designers from across the globe contributing to the creatures' visual design. Na Hong-jin also worked with a linguistics professor to construct an entirely new alien language based on ancient human languages — a level of world-building investment that speaks to his ambitions for the film far beyond its genre surface. He has already confirmed that the story continues beyond this film: "I have the next chapter written. If the opportunity comes, I will absolutely make the sequel."

The film's score, composed by Michael Abels — best known for his atmospheric work on Jordan Peele's Get Out, Us, and Nope — has drawn praise for deepening the film's tonal range across its two-hour-forty-minute runtime. Na Hong-jin's intentional genre disruptions, using dark comedy and tonal shifts to prevent monotony, keep the experience from ever feeling exhausting.

What Comes Next: A July Korean Release and a Palme d'Or Contender

With the Palme d'Or ceremony scheduled for May 23, Hope enters the final stretch of competition alongside 21 other films from around the world. While some critics have noted that the film's primary power is as visceral entertainment rather than intellectual provocation — one review described it as "almost heroic in its lack of thematic weight" — the standing ovation and strong jury grid placement suggest that the Cannes competition's appetite for bold, crowd-pleasing filmmaking is very much alive.

In Korea, Hope opens in July 2026. Na Hong-jin has indicated he will use the remaining post-production window to refine the film's visual effects — particularly the CGI depicting the alien characters, which some early reviews have flagged as an area where the July cut may show marked improvement.

However those final touches land, Hope has already accomplished something remarkable. At a moment when Korean cinema is defining itself on the global stage more aggressively than ever before — with Squid Game, Parasite, and a cascade of international co-productions reshaping what K-entertainment means — Na Hong-jin's decision to bring Hollywood inside Korean genre filmmaking rather than meeting Hollywood on its own terms may be exactly the kind of creative inversion the industry needed to see. The aliens may be extraterrestrial. The vision is unmistakably, proudly Korean.