- 'Yes' vote prevails in Kazakhstan nuclear plant vote: TV
- 'Difficult day': Oct 7 commemorations begin with festival memorial
- Commemorations begin for anniversary of attack on Israel
- Lewandowski hat-trick powers Liga leaders Barca to Alaves victory
- 'Nothing gets in way of team,' says Celtics' MVP hopeful Tatum
- India maintain Pakistan stranglehold as Windies cruise at Women's T20 World Cup
- 'We will win!': Mozambique's ruling party confident at final vote rally
- Tunisia voting ends as Saied eyes re-election with critics behind bars
- Florida braces for Milton, FEMA head slams 'dangerous' Helene misinformation
- Postecoglou slams 'unacceptable' Spurs after 'terrible' loss at Brighton
- Marmoush double denies Bayern outright Bundesliga top spot
- Rallies worldwide call for Gaza, Lebanon ceasefire
- Maresca hails Chelsea's 'fighting' spirit after draw with 10-man Forest
- New 'Joker' film, a dark musical, tops N.America box office
- Man Utd stalemate keeps Ten Hag in danger, Spurs rocked by Brighton
- Drowned by hurricane, remote N.Carolina towns now struggle for water
- Vikings hold off Jets in London to stay unbeaten
- Ahead of attack anniversary, Netanyahu says: 'We will win'
- West Indies cruise to T20 World Cup win over Scotland
- Arshdeep, Chakravarthy help India hammer Bangladesh in T20 opener
- Lewandowski's quickfire hat-trick powers Liga leaders Barca to Alaves victory
- Man Utd fire another blank in Aston Villa stalemate
- Lewandowski treble powers Liga leaders Barca to Alaves victory
- Russian activist killed on front line in Ukraine
- Openda strike briefly sends Leipzig top of Bundesliga
- Goal-shy Man Utd have to 'step up', says Ten Hag
- India bowl out Bangladesh for 127 in T20 opener
- Madueke rescues Chelsea in draw with 10-man Forest
- Beckett's belief rewarded as Bluestocking storms to Arc glory
- Trump on the stump, Harris hits airwaves in razor-edge US election
- Flash flooding kills three in northern Thailand
- Kaur leads India to victory over Pakistan in Women's T20 World Cup
- Juventus held by Cagliari after late penalty drama
- In France's Marseille, teen 'stabbed 50 times' then burned alive
- Ruthless Gauff beats Muchova in straight sets to win China Open
- India restrict Pakistan to 105-8 in Women's T20 World Cup
- England target repeat of Pakistan Test whitewash
- Penrith Panthers win fourth straight NRL title after downing Storm
- Weary Sinner happy for day off after battling into Shanghai last 16
- Pakistan's Masood warns England still a force without Stokes
- Madrid's Carvajal to miss several months after serious knee injury
- Israel pounds Lebanon ahead of Hamas attack anniversary
- Two elephants die in flash flooding in northern Thailand
- Sabalenka targets world number one and Wuhan hat-trick
- Toddler among 4 dead in migrant Channel crossings
- Tunisia votes with Saied set for re-election
- Bagnaia sets 'example' with Japan MotoGP win to cut gap on Martin
- Intense Israeli bombing rocks Beirut ahead of war anniversary
- Mozambique vote: no suspense but some disillusion
- Austrian rapper channels anti-racist rage in Romani hip-hop songs
It's 'K-Cannes' as South Korean entries entice film fest
South Korean movies are making a strong showing at the Cannes Film Festival, riding on a wave of enthusiasm for series like "Squid Game" and movies like "Parasite", and catering to a taste for sophisticated intrigue and polished action.
"It feels like a golden age for South Korean productions," said Lee Jung-jae, the superstar actor in Netflix's "Squid Game", whose debut as a director, "Hunt", has screened out of competition at Cannes.
"And that's just the beginning," he told AFP.
The Hollywood Reporter called "Hunt", which tells the story of two South Korean secret agents who compete with each other to unmask a North Korean mole, a "twisty espionage thriller", while The Wrap noted an abundance of "double agents, buried secrets and lots of broken arms".
In the running for the coveted Palme d'Or, meanwhile, is "Decision to Leave" by director Park Chan-wook, who told AFP his country's turbulent postwar history had shaped the collective personality of South Koreans, and made for interesting film production.
"We went through extreme situations and that has changed our character," he said. "That goes for both the film-going public and film-makers. We don't have a tranquil or zen character, we're temperamental and that's reflected in our films and series."
- 'Is there a law?' -
"Decision To Leave" tells the story of a detective who, investigating a man's fatal fall from a mountain, comes under the spell of the victim's wife whom he suspects of having caused her husband's death.
Park said the film drew inspiration from the methodical police work contained in the Swedish "Martin Beck" crime thriller books. "That's what I wanted to represent in a movie," he said.
The detective story increasingly meshes with the mutual attraction engulfing the main characters, and the resulting erotic tension that is heightened by the constant proximity of death.
"I'm not a romantic, but I'm very interested in the expression of emotions," said Park.
The film's mesmerising soundtrack includes the Adagio in Mahler's 5th Symphony which was immortalised as a soundtrack in the 1971 movie "Death In Venice" by Luchino Visconti.
"I tried to find other classical pieces that could work, but this piece by Mahler was just ideal," Park said. "And I thought, is there a law that says only Visconti gets to use this piece? No there isn't, so I went ahead."
He added, laughing: "But I knew before coming to Cannes that I'd get asked about it here."
- 'Vengeance justified?' -
Park's Cannes entry comes nearly two decades after his "Oldboy" that won the festival's second-highest prize in 2004 and helped catapult South Korean cinema onto the global stage -- years before "Parasite" which won both the Palme d'Or and best foreign film at the Oscars.
"Parasite didn't come out of nowhere, and Oldboy in many ways set things in motion for what came later," Jason Bechervaise, a professor at Korea Soongsil Cyber University, told AFP.
Park's focus on revenge and forgiveness touched a nerve in post-9/11 America, Brian Hu, a film professor at San Diego State University, told AFP.
"Is vengeance justified? Is it effective?", he said.
Park has also dabbled in television with the BBC's English-language miniseries "The Little Drummer Girl", based on a 1983 spy novel by John le Carre.
South Korea is also the setting for another Palme d'Or entry this year, "Broker", directed by Japan's Hirokazu Kore-eda.
"Broker" looks at so-called baby boxes where mothers can anonymously abandon their newborns to avoid the stigma and hardship of being a single mother in a patriarchal society.
The film features a South Korean all-star cast, including top actors Song Kang-ho (Parasite), Gang Dong-won (Peninsula), and K-pop megastar Lee Ji-eun.
Kore-eda has defied long-standing tensions between Japan and South Korea to build strong relationships with top South Korean talent and visiting its Busan International Film Festival in 2019 during a trade war.
His film is one of 21 vying for the Palme d'Or, with the winner to be announced on Saturday.
jh-burs/er/ach
A.Rodriguezv--AMWN