The late Korean actor Lee Sun-kyun will be honored at the 29th Busan International Film Festival with a special program titled ‘In Memory of Lee Sun-kyun’, where six of the actor’s most beloved films will be screened. The festival will also honor the late actor with this year’s Korean Cinema Award.

Best known for his role in Bong Joon-ho’s Academy Award–winning 2019 film Parasite, on December 27, 2023, Lee died from suicide at the age of 48. At the time of his death, Lee had been investigated for alleged drug consumption.

In the program at the festival is a collection of three Lee’s early films as an actor, including director Park Chan-ok’s Paju (2009), which earned him the Best Actor Award at the Las Palmas International Film Festival 2010, where he plays a conflicted character, an ex-political activist with a sense of calling who falls in love with his sister-in-law.

Also included in the program are Our Sunhi (2013), directed by Hong Sangsoo, which won the Best Director award at Locarno International Film Festival 2013 with an energetic stand-out performance from Lee; and A Hard Day (2014), which screened in the Director’s Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival 2014 and had Lee execute intense action sequences and suspenseful acting in the role of a corrupt detective.

An episode of My Mister (2018), a TV series in which Lee starred, has also been selected for the big screen experience through the special program.

Parasite, the Bong Joon-ho feature that marked the pinnacle of Lee Sun-kyun’s acting career when it became the first Korean film to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival 2019 and garnered four awards at the Academy Awards 2020, including the top prize of Best Picture; and Lee’s posthumous film Land of Happiness (2024) where he plays a righteous soldier who gets embroidered in a presidential assassination, will also be screened.

The 29th Busan International Film Festival will take place October 2 to 11, 2024.