Parasite Becomes the First Non-English Film to Win Best Picture

At the 92nd Academy Awards in February 2020, director Bong Joon Ho's black comedy thriller Parasite won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Prior to this victory, no non-English-language film had ever captured the top prize in the history of the ceremony. The South Korean production also secured three other major Oscars at the same event: Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature Film, and was the first South Korean film ever to be nominated for, or to win, an Academy Award.

The concept originated in 2013 while Bong was directing Snowpiercer. Drawing upon his own youthful background as a tutor for a wealthy household in Seoul, Bong drafted an initial theatrical premise about a low-income family infiltrating an affluent home. He expanded this into a fifteen-page film treatment, which co-writer Han Jin-won subsequently developed into three distinct script drafts. Bong later completed the screenplay, citing narrative inspiration from the 1960 Korean domestic drama The Housemaid and the historical French murder case involving Christine and Lea Papin.