1988–present
Park Ji-min
Park Ji-min was born in Seoul, arrived in Paris at the age of nine and studied at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs. She first worked as a visual artist: drawings, sculptures, objects, video. She became an actress almost by chance, when she was given the lead in Davy Chou’s “Return to Seoul” (2022). Nominations at the Asian Film Awards and the Lumière Awards followed.
Biography
The first meeting with the director Davy Chou was supposed to be just a conversation. Chou was looking for someone who could tell him about Korean culture from the inside, and mutual acquaintances were enough to bring them together. After the talk he offered her a camera test for the lead role.
She had no plans to act and had never taken an acting class.
Park Ji-min was born in Seoul in 1988 and lived there until she was nine. Her parents, both artists, “dreamed of elsewhere”, in her words, and wanted to shield their children from the pressure that in Korea accompanies any talk of success. In 1997 the family moved to France. Her interest in cinema dated from childhood, under her father’s influence, but it did not become a profession for her. After the baccalaureate, the French school-leaving examination, she entered the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris. She then built her own practice: sculpture, painting, drawings, objects, video. She describes her art as a search for identity and an exploration of spaces of paradox. In 2019 her work was shown at the 62nd Salon de Montrouge, and in 2021 at “100%”, an exhibition of art-school graduates, at the Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris. In 2023 there was an exhibition at the gallery Circonstances in Nice, and in 2024 she took part in the group show “Arcanes, rituels et chimères” (“Arcana, Rituals and Chimeras”) at FRAC Corsica, the regional contemporary art collection of Corsica.
She did not accept Chou’s offer at once. She hesitated, and then spent about a year rewriting the script with the director, reshaping the role so that it carried a feminist position and an authentic image of Korean culture. In “Return to Seoul” she plays Freddie, a French woman of Korean origin who was adopted as a child: the character travels to South Korea and meets her biological parents. For this role Park Ji-min was nominated at the Asian Film Awards and the Lumière Awards.
In 2024 she played Ye-Ji Kang in the Apple TV+ series “La Maison”, a drama about a haute couture house. In 2025 three films with her took part in the Cannes Film Festival: Hafsia Herzi’s “The Little Sister”, in which she played Ji-Na, Rebecca Zlotowski’s “A Private Life” (the role of Vanessa Haddad-Park) and Anna Cazenave Cambet’s “Love Me Tender”. “The Little Sister” was in the main competition and won the Queer Palm. For this role Park Ji-min was nominated for the 2026 César, the French national film award, as best supporting actress. Christophe Honoré’s film “Mariage au goût d’orange” is announced for 2026, with her in the role of Michou.
Profile notes