Bong Joon Ho

Bong Joon Ho works by running genres into one another. The Host is plainly a creature feature, with a mutated fish monster coming out of the Han River to eat picnickers in Seoul, but the film welds Hollywood blockbuster and the Japanese kaiju tradition to the relationships of a family drama and to political satire. It opens with an American scientist ordering his Korean assistant to pour formaldehyde into the Han, and it became the first major Korean film to criticise the American legacy in the country openly. Memories of Murder was his first work with the actor Song Kang-ho. Mother, from 2009, follows a woman whose son is accused of killing a schoolgirl. Parasite took the Palme d'Or at Cannes and then the Academy Awards for best picture, directing, screenplay and international feature. The Asian Film Awards archive enters him twice in the screenplay category, at the fourth ceremony for Mother and at the fourteenth for Parasite.