Parasite's Historic Oscar Win, Revisited
Bong Joon-ho's razor-sharp social thriller became the first non-English-language film to win Best Picture — a moment that continues to reshape global cinema.
By The ITSMOVIES Desk · August 10, 2026 · 5 min read
It remains one of the defining moments in modern awards history: at the 92nd Academy Awards, Bong Joon-ho's Parasite became the first non-English-language film ever to win Best Picture, a milestone whose ripple effects are still being felt across the industry.
The 2019 South Korean black-comedy thriller follows the impoverished Kim family as they gradually infiltrate the household of the wealthy Park family, in a story that dissects class division with surgical precision. The film is renowned for its razor-sharp direction, its startling tonal shifts and its layered use of architecture and space to embody social hierarchy.
Alongside Best Picture, Parasite won Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature Film — and had earlier taken the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, an exceedingly rare double.
Its triumph is widely credited with accelerating global interest in international cinema, paving the way for foreign-language films and series to reach mainstream audiences on a scale that would have been hard to imagine only a few years earlier.
