At the 2020 Screen Actors Guild Awards ceremony on Sunday, South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” won the best ensemble prize, the much-coveted top prize of the event. “Parasite” is the first foreign film to claim that award in SAG. Now it appears more likely that the Korean movie will win a few more titles at the Academy Awards in addition to Best Foreign Language Film, which will take place on February 9 (local time).
At the ceremony, which was held in Los Angeles, the U.S., “Parasite” was chosen as winner the best ensemble prize. The entire cast of the movie – Song Kang-ho, Choi Woo-sik, Lee Seon-gyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, and Lee Jeong-eun – came onto the stage and received the trophy together. The last non-English movie ever nominated for this prize was “Life is beautiful” in 1999.
“There are so many legendary films overseas. After today, we will be able to watch many more foreign and Asian movies,” said Choi Woo-shik, who played Ki-woo in the movie, during a Q&A session with foreign reporters after the ceremony.
SAG is the biggest actors association in the United States with some 160,000 members including movie stars, voice actors, and stunt men, and it is considered as the barometer of the Oscars as SAG ceremony is held right before Academy Awards ceremony. Around 15 percent of members of Academy Awards are actors and actresses, who are also the members of SAG. Among many professions that comprise the membership, actors are known to have the biggest psychological resistance to foreign films as captions are needed to understand them.
Seo-Hyun Lee baltika7@donga.com