Director Na Hong-jin is set to receive the Daniel A. Craft Award for Excellence in Action Cinema at the 25th edition of the New York Asian Film Festival. The award comes as the festival is gearing up to screen the final cut of his latest epic as its Centerpiece Film, Hope, which opens this Fall from NEON.
Hope screens competitively at NYAFF as part of the festival’s 69 feature line-up officiated as of last week for its July 10 kick-off. The film drew scores of praise following its World Premiere at the 79th Cannes Film Festival for the Main Competition in May, prior to its acquisition by NEON with a teaser launch the same week.
The cast is led by Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung, and Netflix series “Squid Game” breakout Hoyeon in her feature film debut, and follows the residents of Hope Harbor, from a weary police chief and his foul-mouthed sergeant to a ragtag group of hunters as a mysterious presence emerges in the forests surrounding their quiet village.
“Ultimately, what this film hopes to explore and convey is the familiar adage that all the world’s tragedies stem from misunderstandings,” says Na. While audiences may come for the pulse-pounding genre spectacle, the director describes HOPE simply as “a human drama.”
Academy Award nominee Michael Fassbender, Academy Award winner Alicia Vikander, Taylor Russell (Waves, Bones and All), and Cameron Britton (Mindhunter, Mickey 17) also star. The film was shot across South Korea and Romania’s Retezat National Park with Hong Kyung-pyo (The Wailing, Parasite, Burning) serving as cinematographer, Michael Abels (Get Out, Nope) anchoring the film’s score.
Additionally, NYAFF will host a retrospective of Na earlier films, offering audiences the chance to revisit the work of a filmmaker who has spent nearly two decades pushing Korean genre cinema into stranger and darker territory. Per the announcement: “From his breakout debut The Chaser (2008, on 35mm), the relentless serial-killer thriller that premiered in Cannes’ Miadnight Screenings section, to the brutal cross-border noir The Yellow Sea (2010, Un Certain Regard 2011) and the supernatural dread of The Wailing (2016, Out of Competition), each film expanded the boundaries of genre filmmaking in its own way. With HOPE, his first film in Competition, NYAFF brings together all four of Na’s features for the first time, a fitting celebration of a filmmaker whose work has always been impossible to predict.”
Below is the schedule for the Na Hong-jin retrospective:
• The Chaser (2008) — Sunday, July 26, 5:45 PM SVA Theatre – 35mm
• The Yellow Sea (2010) — Sunday, July 19, 3:30 PM Korean Cultural Center New York
• The Wailing (2016) — Sunday, July 19, 9:30 PM SVA Theatre
• HOPE (2026) — Monday, July 20, 7:00 PM SVA Theatre — Centerpiece Presentation · North American Premiere · Intro & Q&A with Na Hong-jin