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| ▲ This photo, shows Lee Jung-Jae in Cannes who attended as a director. (Yonhap) |
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| ▲ This photo, shows Lee Jung Jae (center) who directed the movie 'Hunt' and Jung Woo-sung (right) who took the lead role. |
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| ▲ This photo, provided by MegaBox plus M, shows Lee Jung-jae, the director and Jung Woo-sung, the lead role for the movie "Hunt." (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap) |
CANNES, France, May 22 (Yonhap) -- It would not be an exaggeration to say that 2022 have been the year of Lee Jung-jae’s third heyday. After receiving the world’s attention with “Squid Game,” he won various acting awards, including the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Now, he has also presented his dictorial debut, “Hunt” at the Cannes Film Festival.
This film, written and directed by Lee Jung-jae for the first time in 30 years of his acting career, was first shown in the Cannes Film Festival “Midnight Screening” section which screens genre films at midnight.
Lee Jung-jae, who met reporters in Cannes on the 21st (local time) said, “It was a small dream of mine to have the first screening of ‘Hunt’ at the Cannes Film Festival, so I’m just happy and very grateful that it came true.”
“Hunt” is an espionage action thriller where two rival intelligence agents of South Korea in the 1980s, Park Pyong-ho and Kim Jung-do faces the big truth while chasing after the chief. Lee Jung-jae has also took on the role of Park Pyong-ho.
Initially, he was supposed to participate in this work only as an actor. However, as directors Jung Ji-woo and Han Jae-rim, who were in the spotlight left one after another, he held the megaphone. He said that it wasn’t so difficult as “Hunt” was a “story that he always wanted to write.”
“Pyong-ho and Jung-do are opposed to each other because they are used by different ideologies. I wanted to tell something like that. We argue because we have different opinions, but in fact, there actually is someone who incites and creates it.”
“As much as it was my first time writing and directing a film, there were a lot of twists and turns.”
“I felt like I was in a very difficult, troubled situation since it was my first time writing a screenplay.” Lee Jung-jae recalled. “Since we had to make big and small plans from completing the scenario to meeting audiences overseas, it was different from acting.”
“If I had a little more time, I think I could have improved the level of perfection,” he continued. “But I did try my best in the given time.”
As if his efforts were conveyed beyond the screen, “Hunt” received a standing ovation from the audience for three minutes at the time of its first screening.
“Do people usually clap this long?” Lee Jung-jae thought to himself. “It was my first time receiving a standing ovation from the audience for such a long time” he laughed.
“It was definitely a reaction I wasn’t expecting. I heard a lot of stories that in the midnight screening, audiences would leave in the middle of a movie if it wasn’t good enough. So, I wondered how “Hunt” would go, but people were staying till late night and sent an applause. It felt like the applause was for everyone who made the movie together.”
His best friend, Jung Woo-sung, was with him throughout the four years of preparing and filming the movie. It has been 23 years since they have collaborated on screen in “City of the Rising Sun” as Jung Woo-sung plays the role of Kim Jung-do, the rival of Park Pyeong-ho. Lee Jung-Jae emphasized, “I wanted to do it with Jung Woo-sung from the moment I bought the movie rights.”
“Being Woosung’s friend and colleague, I became greedy. I really wanted to hear people say ‘Lee Jung-jae shot the best for Jung Woo-sung.’ It felt like I had a sense of mission. I purposely added expressions or actions that the actor Jung Woo-sung wouldn’t usually do and kept telling him that Jung-do has to be the coolest. Haha.”
Lee Jung-jae said that he came to realize that he was a “world star” at the Cannes Film Festival, which he visited after the hit of “Squid Game.” He said that wherever he’d go, there would be fans asking for a picture, along with pouring interview requests from overseas media.
“I actually wasn’t a person with such big dreams,” he continued. “I just did my best, and so came across a work called ‘Squid Game’. Since I worked hard for the character of Sung Ki-hoon, it seemed to have gotten good responses overseas.”
“People who don’t know me think that I took a big step and made a big ‘jump’. But I just worked hard every day to make a small ‘dot’. The process of directing ‘Hunt’ was the same. I think I would be able to direct more in the future. But I still want to do more acting. I would want to meet overseas fans as an actor in the future.”
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