'Parasite'

Source: 2019 CJ ENM Corporation, Barunson E&A

‘Parasite’

Curzon has taken UK and Ireland rights to Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite ahead of the film’s world premiere in Cannes Competition tonight (May 21).

The deal was negotiated by Cate Kane for Curzon and James Seo for sales representative CJ Entertainment.

The film stars Song Kang-ho in the story of two families - Ki-taek’s family of four is close, but fully unemployed, with a bleak future ahead of them. The son Ki-woo is recommended for a well-paid tutoring job, spawning hopes of a regular income. Carrying familial expectations, Ki-woo heads to the Park family home for an interview where he meets Yeon-kyo, the beautiful young lady of the house. But following this first meeting between the two families, an unstoppable string of mishaps lies in wait.

Curzon’s previous Korean cinema releases include Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden, which grossed an impressive £1.3m in 2017. The title won the 2018 Bafta for film not in the English language, the first Korean film to do so.

The deal takes Curzon’s count of Cannes Competition titles this year to three, with the distributor having acquired Céline Sciamma’s Portrait Of A Lady On Fire and Corneliu Porumboiu’s The Whistlers pre-festival.