Oscars: Korea Submits Park Chan-wook’s ‘Decision To Leave’ For International Feature Race

Nancy Tartaglione
·2 min read
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Park Chan-wook’s crime drama Decision To Leave has been selected by South Korea to represent the country in the Best International Feature category at the 95th Academy Awards.

The film originally debuted in Cannes where Park won the Best Director prize. It is also teed up to screen at the New York Film Festival this fall. Mubi has North American rights.

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The Korean Film Council announced its choice this evening local time saying it took into consideration “workmanship and directing ability, the possibility of box office success in the North American market, and the promotion ability of overseas distributors.” The selection committee “agreed that Decision To Leave is the most appropriate, and we expect the work to be well-received.”

Park Hae-il and Tang Wei star in the noir detective story cum romance.

In Park’s own words, as he described the plot of Decision To Leave to Deadline: “A detective is dispatched to a scene of death of a man who has fallen from the mountains. There are three possibilities with this case: either he took a wrong step during a climb and he accidentally fell, or he committed suicide, or someone pushed him off the cliff. And so, the detective calls in the wife of the dead man to have her confirm the identity of the man, but he notices that there’s something special about her. He doesn’t quite know what it is, and there are other detectives who are suspicious of her, but nonetheless, although he doesn’t want to acknowledge this, he is unknowingly attracted to her for some reason. He feels a mixture of suspicion and this attraction, so he starts to carry out an in-depth investigation on her.”

Cannes Review: Park Chan-wook’s ‘Decision To Leave’

Backed by CJ ENM, Decision To Leave was released in Korea on June 29 and has grossed $14.3M locally, making it the 6th biggest movie of the year so far.

Korea won its first Oscar with Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite in 2020, making even further history by scooping Best Picture and Best Director. This year marks Park’s first time repping the country.

Here’s the list of category submissions so far:

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