Entertainment News

Park Chan-wook shut out of the Oscars again: why 'No Other Choice' missed the final five

Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice received no Oscar nominations when the list was published on January 22. The Korea Herald reports that the film made the 15-film shortlist for best international feature but did not reach the final five, and that Park has still never been nominated.

“In 34 years of directing, Park Chan-wook has never received an Oscar nomination.” — The Korea Herald, via Asia News Network

The paper offers several reasons. The category was crowded, with The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, It Was Just an Accident and Sirat all gaining ground, and The Voice of Hind Rajab was helped by a late campaign. Neon, the film's North American distributor, reportedly held US rights to four of the contenders, which the paper calls “unprecedented”. It also mentions Park's expulsion from the Writers Guild of America last year over his work on The Sympathizer, while saying the effect is hard to measure.

Gulf News took a different angle. It focused on viewers' reactions online and on the performance of Son Ye-jin, who plays the wife of Lee Byung-hun's character.

How each outlet framed it

• The Korea Herald — an analysis of what went wrong, set against the hopes raised by Parasite's best picture win in 2020.
• Gulf News — fan anger, quoting posts such as “No Other Choice missing is a travesty.”
• SBS Star — the box office: the film kept selling tickets in North America after the snub.

Where the numbers differ: in late January The Korea Herald called the film, with over $7 million, the second-highest-grossing Korean film ever released in the US, behind Parasite. In March, SBS Star reported it had passed $10 million but ranked it third, behind Parasite and D-War.