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Poster for the La Cinef section of the 79th Cannes International Film Festival (provided by Yonhap News)

The Palme d'Or race, the star-studded red carpet — these are the images that typically define Cannes on the international stage. Yet at the 79th Cannes International Film Festival in 2025, Korean cinema's presence is being forged well outside that familiar template. Without a single entry in the main feature competition, Korean film has arrived through three distinct pathways: documentary, XR (extended reality), and student short.

The most immediately striking of these is director Lee Myung-se's documentary Ran 12.3. The film documents the declaration of martial law on December 3, 2024, and the surge of citizens who mobilized toward the National Assembly in response — rendered without interviews or narration, through music and image alone. Drawing on footage, photographs, and illustrations captured by more than 200 citizens, lawmakers, and legislative staff, the film reconstructs the urgency of that moment. It is set to be presented to international industry professionals at the Cannes Film Market this May. Given that the martial law crisis drew intense coverage from major global outlets, the film carries the potential to be read not merely as a Korean domestic event but as a universal narrative about democracy under threat — and interest is growing around its prospects for international distribution as a timely political documentary.

The expansion of form extends further. XR work VOOOOOO---PEEEEEE---, created by media artist duo Woo Hyun-ju and Park Ji-yun, has been selected for the Immersive competition at the 79th Cannes Film Festival. The Immersive section was inaugurated at the 77th edition in 2024, and presents competitive entries in VR, AR, and other immersive and interactive formats that transport audiences into entirely different worlds and narratives through cutting-edge technology. The work explores the relationship between technology, the human body, and sensory experience; both artists appear in the piece themselves, probing the boundary between flesh and machine. The duo's selection — based out of the Asia Culture Center (ACC) residency — is also notable for demonstrating that the combination of public arts support infrastructure and experimental media art can translate onto the international stage.

Two Korean-related works have been named to La Cinef, the festival's student short film competition. Bird Rhapsody, directed by Choi Won-jung, a current student at Hongik University, is among 19 works selected from a global submission pool of 2,750. The film explores an inner journey through the figure of a human chasing an elusive bird — a universal preoccupation filtered through personal narrative — and appears to have drawn the jury's attention at the intersection of these two registers. Also invited is Silent Voices, by Korean-American director Nadine Misong Jin, a student at Columbia University in New York. The 17-minute film captures the rupture and survival of a family that has immigrated from Korea to New York, approaching Korean emotional sensibility through a diasporic lens. That two works of such different backgrounds and languages were selected side by side suggests that a new generation of Korean filmmakers — cultivated both within and beyond institutional channels — is already finding its own voice in the international film world.

Since Parasite claimed the Palme d'Or in 2019, Korean cinema's international achievements have often been consumed through a "who's next after Bong Joon-ho" framework. The picture emerging from Cannes 2025 follows a different logic. Rather than converging on a single director or a single headline-grabbing title, works of divergent forms, generations, and concerns are each finding their own way onto the international stage. This trajectory can be read as a signal that Korean cinema is expanding beyond the status of singular exceptional success, toward a more layered and pluralistic creative ecosystem.

Sources

• MAXMOVIE, "Documentary Ran 12.3 to Screen at Cannes Film Market," 2026.04.26

• MAXMOVIE, "Media Artists Woo Hyun-ju and Park Ji-yun's New Work Invited to Cannes Immersive Competition," 2026.04.26

• Yonhap News Agency, "Hongik University's Director Choi Won-jung's Bird Rhapsody Invited to Cannes Student Section," 2026.04.22