CANNES, France — Director Na Hong-jin’s long-awaited return to cinema with “Hope” drew a seven-minute standing ovation at Cannes, instantly turning the science-fiction thriller into one of the festival’s most talked-about titles. The film is Na’s first directorial film in a decade since mystery thriller “The Wailing” (2016).

“Hope” premiered on Sunday as the 12th of 22 films competing in the main competition section at the 79th Cannes Film Festival. Despite its late screening, starting at 9:30 p.m., and lengthy 160-minute runtime, audiences filled the 2,300-seat Grand Lumière Theater to the end, rewarding the film with a seven-minute standing ovation in response to Na’s audacious experiment.


Hollywood actors Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander and Taylor Russell, who portray aliens in the film, attended alongside Na and lead actors Hwang Jung-min and Zo In-sung.

After the screening, Na repeatedly thanked the audience, saying, “I sincerely thank you for staying with the film until the very end.”


Aliens invade Cannes

In Cannes’ competition lineup, which is typically dominated by auteur-led dramas — films with strong artistic expression, symbolism and directorial identity — “Hope” stood out immediately as a science-fiction action thriller with aliens. The very inclusion of such a commercial genre film in competition was “rare,” Deadline wrote.

Set in the 1980s in the remote fishing village of Hopo Port near the Korean demilitarized zone, the film follows outpost police officer chief Bum-seok, played by Hwang, who pursues intruders after cattle and residents in the village begin dying one after another. A group of local youths led by Sung-Ki, played by Zo, joins the chase, which unfolds breathlessly for more than an hour.

As mutilated bodies pile up across mountain villages and rice paddies without anyone understanding why, a superhuman species finally reveals itself. Resembling a cross between the Titans from the animated series “Attack on Titan” (2013-23) and the Na’vi from the fantasy action “Avatar” franchise (2009-25), the creatures are ultimately revealed to be aliens stranded on Earth after losing their home planet.

Rather than focusing on their backstory, however, the film emphasizes relentless action and the spectacle of bloody carnage itself.


A longtime favorite

The director has been a festival favorite, so much so that all four of his feature films have been invited to the event.

His debut feature “The Chaser” (2008) established his unique style when it screened in the festival’s Midnight Screenings section in 2008.

“Na Hong-jin immediately established a distinctive style: suffocating tension, stark violence and a highly physical way of filming chaos,” said Cannes about Na’s debut feature in an article revisiting the director’s filmography, posted on its official website on Sunday.

Cannes additionally commented on Na’s “The Yellow Sea” (2010), which screened in Un Certain Regard in 2011, saying it “cemented Na Hong-jin's status as a major figure in genre cinema.” It also echoed the same thoughts regarding his 2016 horror film “The Wailing," which screened out of competition in 2016, calling him a “cult filmmaker with only three feature films” at the time.

Film “Hope” resembles “The Wailing,” in portraying a community “flung into terror and paranoia by an external threat they can’t begin to understand” along with “half-baked law enforcement officers who are ill-equipped to deal with the unfolding carnage,” Screen Daily said Monday.


A one and only genre

However, despite the similarities with “The Wailing,” Na’s latest film expands much further in genre terms.

Film critic Jeon Chan-il described “Hope” as “a Na Hong-jin style hybrid film unlike anything seen before.”

Jung Han-seok, director of the Busan International Film Festival, compared the film to an invention after attending the screening.

“If director Bong Joon-ho invented the rural thriller with ‘Memories of Murder’ [2003], director Na Hong-jin invented rural science fiction,” Jung said. “Its genre ambition, entertainment value, technical achievement and Na’s signature black comedy stand out.”

Like Na’s earlier films, “Hope” contains intense violence, but the absurdity of its characters gives the film a lighter tone than his previous work. Bum-seok repeatedly drives residents toward danger while attempting to save them, and the sense of justice embodied by police officer Sung-ae, played by Jung Ho-yeon, is at times exaggerated.

In fact, veteran actor Lym Hyeon-sik drew some of the loudest laughter with a scene in which his character, an older villager, encounters an alien while relieving himself in the woods and proceeds to elaborate at length on the methods he used to stop diarrhea.

“The crowd loved it, cackling with laughter while clad in black tie and haute couture, sitting inside a theater described as ‘the temple of Cinema,’” Variety wrote Sunday.


Mixed feelings on CGI and message

Reactions to the film’s alien computer-generated imagery (CGI), however, have been sharply divided.

U.S. outlet IndieWire criticized the film, writing that the first hour of the film is “an elaborate game of hide-and-seek, as the monster always manages to flee the scene just before Bum-seok arrives. When we, at last, get our first good look at the creature after 45 minutes or so, it’s enough to immediately understand why Na tried to hide it from us for so long (and enough to immediately wish that he hid it from us for a whole lot longer, perhaps stretching out the scarier-when-unseen ‘Jaws’ [1975] approach for the rest of the movie).”

Fassbender and Vikander, who perform entirely in alien language through motion-capture characters whose real faces never appear onscreen, may have larger roles if sequels are produced.

The film also leaves unclear the moral justification behind the violent conflict between humans and aliens, sparking a wave of interpretation from critics.

Screen Daily wrote that the film makes the audience “question our allegiances and ask who the real monsters are,” while Variety suggested that casting Hollywood stars as expressionless CGI aliens could be interpreted as “a sly inversion of the traditional othering of Asian actors in Hollywood’s own blockbusters.”

Deadline added that the aliens appear “a whole lot more civilized than the humans stalking them without wondering if they really are the enemy,” arguing that the film carries implications about contemporary societies that view immigrants as intruders to be deported.


Still a breakthrough

At a Cannes festival that had largely lacked breakout sensations this year, “Hope” demonstrated its growing buzz by selling out most screenings, including the following day’s showing.

Neon, the distributor behind the North American release of “Parasite” (2019), acquired distribution rights for North America, Britain and Australia, while Mubi, which distributed “Decision to Leave” (2022) in North America and elsewhere, secured rights for South America, Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Turkey.

In addition to “Parasite,” Neon has acquired North American distribution rights to every Palme d’Or winner for six consecutive years since 2019, including “Titane” (2021), “Triangle of Sadness” (2022), “Anatomy of a Fall” (2023), “Anora” (2024) and “It Was Just an Accident” (2025). Winners at this year’s Cannes Film Festival will be announced during the closing ceremony on May 23.

While the exact release date for “Hope” in Korea has yet to be disclosed, it is scheduled to hit theaters sometime this summer.


This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY NA WON-JEONG [kim.jiye@joongang.co.kr]