'Parasite' is the first South Korean film to be nominated for Best International Film
ET reports that Bong Joon-Ho’s South Korean thriller Parasite has made Oscars history.
The film is South Korea’s first movie to be nominated for Best International film. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was the last Asian film to be up for Best Picture back in 2001.
Parasite is also nominated for a total of six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing and Best Production Design.
Other Asian nominations include Kazu Hiro, who was the first Asian person to win Best Makeup and Hairstyling in 2018. Hiro is nominated this year for Bombshell.
Seung-jun Yi and Gary Kam’s film In the Absence is also nominated for Best Documentary Short and Siqi Song’s Sisters was is nominated in the Best Animated Short Film category.
“This is incredible news, and we are honored and excited to receive this nomination,” Yi and Kam said in a joint statement to ET, adding: “The year 2019 was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Korean cinema so it is especially meaningful for us to be a part of the proud moment of film history of Korea.”
Joker, 1917, The Irishman and Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood had slightly more nominations than Parasite with 11, 10, 10 and 10 nominations respectively.
Parasite recently won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film, with Bong telling the audience “not to let subtitles be a barrier to cinema”.