PARASITE Director of Photography Filming Japanese Project

Acclaimed cinematographer Hong Kyoungpyo has signed on to shoot the upcoming Japanese film The Wandering Moon for director Lee Sangil, his first full international project. 

This marks Hong’s second collaboration with a Japanese filmmaker, after recently working on Koreeda Hirokazu’s Baby, Box, Broker, which shot in Korea earlier this year. Hong joined The Wandering Moon as soon as he completed Koreeda’s film in June.

Based on a novel by author Yuu Nagira, The Wandering Moon tells the story of a teenage boy who meets a young girl in a park and brings her to stay with him when she says she doesn’t want to return to her aunt. The pair live together for two months until the boy is arrested for kidnapping. 15 years later, the boy and girl, now a man and young woman, meet again. 

The film will star Suzu Hirose (The Third Murder) as the young woman and Tori Matsuzaka (The Blood of Wolves) as the grown-up man. Director Lee is known for works such as Villain, Unforgiver and Rage.

After getting his start in camera departments in the late 80s, Hong started as a cinematographer in 1994, shooting The Harmonica Of Grief. He soon made a name for himself working on notable early New Korean Cinema works: Im Sangsoo’s Girls’ Night Out (1998), Kim Jeewoon’s The Foul King (2002), Jang Joonhwan’s cult classic Save the Green Planet (2003), and Kang Jegyu’s Korean War classic TaeGukGi: Brotherhood of War (2004).

Starting with Lee Myungse’s M in 2007, Hong became one of the Korean film industry’s chief visual stylists, working with Bong Joonho on Mother (2009), Snowpiercer (2013) and Parasite (2019), on Na Hongjin’s The Wailing (2016) and Lee Changdong’s Burning (2018).

Hong first worked on a major overseas project through Snowpiercer, which was shot on set in Hungary. He also shot Hong Wonchan’s DELIVER US FROM EVIL (2020), which was filmed in Japan and Thailand, in addition to Korea.