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As Bong Joon-ho arrives at a beachside restaurant in Cannes, he has an announcement. Or at least his translator does. “He wants to talk more about soccer with you,” she says, chirpily. The South Korean director behind Snowpiercer and Okja is seemingly more interested in the upcoming Champions League final between Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur than talking up his new movie, Parasite. “I’m supporting Sonny,” he grins, referring to Spurs’ own South Korean star, Son Heung-min.

While Son will ultimately end up empty-handed (sorry, Spurs fans), Bong will not. By the end of the week, the Cannes Film Festival jury unanimously award Parasite the top prize, making Bong the first-ever South Korean to take home the Palme d’Or. “The film is such a unique experience, it’s an unexpected film,” commented jury head Alejandro González Iñárritu, a neat summation of a work that brilliantly straddles arthouse and mainstream with a daring mix of black comedy and social commentary

The seventh movie of an has become Bong’s biggest hit worldwide; at the time of writing it’s taken $106.7 million (with two-thirds of that coming in his native Korea) – eclipsing his previous best, 2006 monster movie . In America, it’s the highest-grossing foreign-language film of the year, making it a nailed-on favourite for Best International Film – as the Oscars are now calling the category for non-English-speaking films – when the Academy Awards take place in February.