Squid Game star Lee Jung-jae's directorial debut Hunt to premiere at Cannes Film Festival

Squid Game star Lee Jung-jae will be at the Cannes Film Festival this year with the world premiere of his feature debut directorial Hunt. The film will be presented next month in the Cannes festival's Midnight Screening section.

Two other films will receive midnight screenings and they are Fumer Fait Tousser, by Quentin Dupieux and Moonage Daydream, by Scott Morgen. The bulk of the festival's Official Selection was announced on Thursday at a press event in Paris.

Hunt is set in the 1980s and is a Korean-language spy thriller that Lee Jung-jae got caught up in after buying the rights and rewriting the screenplay. Lee also stars in the picture alongside veteran actor Jung Woo-sung. His role as an elite agent working for the agency for National Security Planning sees him hunting for a North Korean spy, and becoming increasingly aware of his own country's dark truths.

"Just because I'm doing the director's job on this film doesn't mean I'm going to be giving up acting. I still like acting the best and intend to focus on that," Lee Jung-jae had said in his interview with Variety in October last year.

Lee is an established star in South Korea and rose to popularity in the late 1990s. He also added in his interview that not much had changed for him, and that he was not getting many calls from Hollywood. "No proposals or requests have come my way," he said. "If the right one came along, I'd be happy to be in an overseas production. It could be fun."

But as the international success of Squid Game snowballed, Lee Jung-jae collected multiple US awards. He picked up acting awards at the 28th Screen Actors Guild Awards, the Critics' Choice Awards, and the Independent Spirit Awards, and he became the most bankable star in Korea.