Parasite filmmaker Bong Joon Ho is officially an Oscar winner. The cowriter and director won his first Academy Award on Sunday, taking home best original screenplay for the breakout South Korean film. It’s the first time a foreign-language film has won the original screenplay Oscar since Pedro Almodóvar was honored for Talk to Her at the 2003 ceremony.

“Thank you. Great honor,” Bong said in English before adding in Korean, “Writing a script is always such a lonely process, we never write to represent our countries.” He then switched back to English: “But this is very personal to South Korea. Thank you.”

Cowritten by Bong and Han Jin-won, Parasite first premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last May, where it won the prestigious Palme d’Or award as the event’s top feature. In the months since that debut, the Neon domestic release has received near-uniform praise alongside significant business (more than $33 million in North America and more than $165 million worldwide).

An intricately plotted thriller that’s not short on surprises, laughs, and genuinely compelling social commentary, Parasite focuses on the lower-class Kims, the wealthy Parks, and the tragic results that occur when the two families become intertwined by work. “I think Koreans have a different way of expressing themselves and their emotions, and I think the word quirky is the best way to describe it,” Bong told Vanity Fair in a recent interview. “A lot of the families in my films are sort of in a big mess. They malfunction as a family. I feel the best when I write characters like that.”

To secure the award, Bong and Han defeated Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood writer-director Quentin Tarantino, who was viewed by many as a favorite in this category as late as last month. (Tarantino took home the screenplay award at the Golden Globes ceremony in January and also won best original screenplay at the Critics’ Choice Awards.) It’s a somewhat ironic twist: Tarantino has long supported Bong and expressed great admiration for the director’s work in the past. “Of all the filmmakers out there in the last 20 years, he has something that [1970s] Spielberg has. There is this level of entertainment and comedy in his films,” Tarantino said in 2013, citing Bong’s The Host and Memories of Murder as “masterpieces.”

Had Tarantino won, it would have given him three Oscars in the category, tying Woody Allen’s Academy Awards record. (In total, five men have won three screenplay Oscars: Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, Paddy Chayefsky, Charles Brackett, and Billy Wilder. Allen, however, is the only person to win all three of his awards for original scripts.)

Parasite received six total nominations at the 92nd Academy Awards: best picture, best director for Bong, best original screenplay, best film editing, best production design, and best international feature. It won additional Oscars for best picture, best international feature, and best director for Bong. Not a bad night.

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