The tangled relationship between a wealthy family and a poor one is at the heart of the film ... [+]
Song Kang-ho, Park So-dam, Choi Woo-sik, Lee Sun-kyun and Lee Jung-eun got a standing ovation when they took the stage to present an award at the 2020 SAG Awards. The room full of Hollywood celebrities stood up to applaud the cast of the film Parasite and the enthusiastic response prompted director Bong Joon-ho to scan the room with his phone, capturing both the cast and the stars applauding them.
And that was before the film’s actors won an ensemble award for Best Cast for Parasite, making it the first foreign language film ever to win that honor.
While the film has garnered a slew of awards, the SAG Awards, which are presented by SAG-AFTRA, the Hollywood actors guild, are the only awards ceremony this year to nominate the entire cast of the film as an ensemble.
The list of awards that Parasite has won may soon be longer than the closing credits of the darkly comic film written by Bong and Han Jin-won. Parasite became the first Korean film to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Since then the film has earned more than a dozen awards including Best Picture and Best Director at the 2019 Chicago Film Critics Association Awards and Best Film At Australia’s 9th AACTA International Awards. The film also won Best Picture and Best Screenplay awards at the National Society of Film Critics Awards, then a few days later received Best Motion Picture, Foreign Language at the 77th Golden Globes, the first South Korean film ever to win a Golden Globe. Bong’s tale of economic inequity was not only the first winner of a Golden Globe but also the first South Korean film to be nominated for three Golden Globe Awards.
The film, which follows the mutually exploitive relationship between two families, one poor and the other wealthy, is nominated for six Oscars at the 92nd Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best International Feature Film. The film was released in South Korea by CJ Entertainment in May 2019 and gradually released worldwide through early 2020. It received almost unanimous praise from critics, with many naming Parasite among the best films of the 2010s. The film was not just a critical favorite but was also successful at the box office. To date Parasite had earned $28.2 million in the U.S.and Canada, plus $111.2 million in other places for a total of $139.4 million.
The Academy Awards ceremony takes place on Feb. 9.
