South Korean satire Parasite has won the best original screenplay Oscar at the 92nd Academy Awards. The film had to see off strong competition, including Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, 1917 and Marriage Story.
Directed by Bong Joon-ho, Parasite is about a crafty, hard-up family who manage to infiltrate the lives of a much richer one. The script is jointly credited to Bong and Han Jin-won, with Bong also receiving a “story” credit.
“We never write to represent our country,” he said, “but this is very personal to South Korea.” Bong went on to thank his “wise wife” and the film’s actors, gathered before him.
Since winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival in 2019, Parasite has gone on to receive a string of awards, with a number of accolades specifically for its script including the Bafta and Writers Guild awards for best original screenplay.
Parasite is not the first foreign-language film to win an Oscar for its screenplay: previous winners in this category include Divorce Italian Style, A Man and a Woman and Talk to Her. But Parasite is the first Asian film to take the award.
