The title is almost cruel. In Na Hong-jin’s “Hope,” rescue already seems compromised before the disaster has fully revealed itself. A remote South Korean village is cut off, communication has collapsed, a creature is somewhere nearby, and human panic begins doing what it often does in Na’s films: turning fear into something messier, more violent, and harder to contain.
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NEON has released the first teaser trailer for “Hope,” written and directed by Na and coming to theaters this fall. The film premiered in Competition at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, where the official Cannes listing clocks it at 160 minutes and places it among this year’s Palme d’Or contenders.
The official setup centers on Hope Harbor, where police outpost chief Bum-seok and officer Sung-ae are called in after a mysterious creature has wreaked havoc on the village. In the nearby forest, Sung-ki and a group of hunters set out to track the beast, only to find themselves hunted instead. What begins as ignorance, the official synopsis says, “plants the seed of disaster,” escalating into human conflict and, ultimately, tragedy on a cosmic scale.
The cast is loaded. Hwang Jung-min plays Bum-seok, Zo In-sung plays Sung-ki, and Hoyeon plays Sung-ae, with Taylor Russell, Cameron Britton, Alicia Vikander, and Michael Fassbender also starring. The Cannes credits list cinematography by Hong Kyung-pyo, music by Michael Abels, production design by Lee Hwokyoung, and editing by Kim Sunmin.
For Na, “Hope” marks a major return. His last feature, “The Wailing,” turned village hysteria, spiritual dread, procedural confusion, and folk horror into one of the great genre films of the 2010s. “Hope” appears to widen that canvas without abandoning the same pressure points: mistrust, communal breakdown, official helplessness, and the terror that arrives when people are forced to interpret something beyond their understanding.
The Cannes response has already been loud, with early reactions from the festival helping position “Hope” as one of the year’s major genre-film events. That kind of heat matters for NEON, which has built much of its recent identity around bold Cannes breakouts, from “Parasite” to “Anatomy of a Fall.” “Hope” gives the distributor another large-scale international swing—genre cinema with auteur credibility, a major global cast, and a premise that moves from monster movie to something much stranger.
“Hope” comes to theaters this fall. Watch the teaser trailer below.
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
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