The Big Reveal of OLDBOY 올드보이 by Park Chan-wook 박찬욱 | TIFF 2022

Robyn Citizen, TIFF’s Director, Festival Programming and Cinematheque, discusses the shocking reveal of Park Chan-wook’s OLDBOY. Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2004, Park Chan-wook’s revenge masterpiece is credited with bringing Korean cinema to mainstream attention in North America. The film begins on a dark and stormy night when an ordinary man, Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik), is kidnapped and inexplicably imprisoned in a tiny room for 15 years. Finally freed by his unseen, anonymous captor, the revenge-hungry Dae-su finds himself enmeshed in an even larger and more sadistic web. A sweeping crescendo of ferocious violence punctuated by squirm-inducing acts of mutilation — the unfortunate fate of a live octopus is already cinema legend — Oldboy treads the delicate line between art and exploitation with fierce intelligence and gleefully ostentatious high style. OLDBOY will screen as part of “Summer of Seoul” this July at TIFF Bell Lightbox. For more, visit