©Courtesy of Neon

The New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF), celebrating its landmark 25th edition, and Film at Lincoln Center will present the North American premiere of “HOPE“, the final cut of the fourth feature from acclaimed South Korean director Na Hong-Jin (The Wailing, The Chaser, The Yellow Sea). Selected as the festival’s Centerpiece Film presented by NEON, the screening will take place on Monday, July 20, 2026, at 7:00 PM at the SVA Theatre, as part of NYAFF 2026, which runs July 10–26 across five New York venues anchored by Film at Lincoln Center. HOPE also caps off NYAFF’s complete Na Hong-Jin retrospective, a rare chance to see all four of the director’s features, every one of which premiered at Cannes.

Director Na Hong-Jin is also the recipient of the 2026 Daniel A. Craft Award for Excellence in Action Cinema. Named for Dan Craft, a founder of the festival and a die-hard fan of action cinema, who died in 2013, the award honors filmmakers working at the highest level of the form he loved. HOPE is considered the largest and most relentless film of Director Na’s career, ten years after The Wailing. Previous recipients include Hong Kong action maestros Dante Lam (Operation Red Sea) and the legendary Yuen Woo-ping (The Matrix, Blades of the Guardians).

Mixing sci-fi, action, mystery, and the director’s trademark dark humor, the film follows the residents of Hope Harbor, from a weary police chief and his foul-mouthed sergeant to a ragtag group of hunters, as a mysterious presence emerges in the forests surrounding their quiet village. Like The Wailing, the film wrestles with fear of the unknown, mistaken assumptions, and the violence that grows from misunderstanding. “Ultimately, what this film hopes to explore and convey is the familiar adage that all the world’s tragedies stem from misunderstandings,” says Na. While audiences may come for the pulse-pounding genre spectacle, the director describes HOPE simply as “a human drama.”

HOPE brings together a marquee Korean cast led by Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung, and Squid Game breakout Hoyeon in her feature film debut, alongside an international ensemble portraying the film’s mysterious visitors through performance capture: Academy Award nominee Michael Fassbender, Academy Award winner Alicia Vikander, Taylor Russell (Waves, Bones and All), and Cameron Britton (Mindhunter, Mickey 17). Shot across South Korea and the untouched wilderness of Romania’s Retezat National Park by cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo (The Wailing, Parasite, Burning), the film is also scored by Michael Abels (Get Out, Nope). NEON will release HOPE in North America on Wednesday, September 9th.