History made!
Parasite won big at the 2020 Oscars, taking home a total of four awards: Best Director, Best International Feature Film, Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture.
It is the first non-English film in Oscar history to win Best Picture, the first Asian and South Korean film to win Best Screenplay and the first South Korean movie to win International Feature Film.
Additionally, director Bong Joon-ho is the first Korean to win Best Director at the prestigious awards, and he and co-writer Han Jin Won are the first Asian writers to take a screenplay prize.
“I feel like I’ll wake up to find it’s all a dream. It all feels very surreal,” Bong said of the wins.
Parasite, which tells the story of a lower-income family who infiltrates a wealthy household only to learn a much darker secret, has led awards season, scoring wins at the BAFTAs, the Critics’ Choice Awards, the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild Awards, where the cast was recognized for their performance in the film, making it the first foreign-language film to win a SAG Award for Ensemble Performance. For Bong, the awards are a reminder to audiences that international films deserve attention, too.
“Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to many more amazing films,” he said at the Golden Globes after winning the award for Best Foreign-Language Film.
