Korean director Lee Chang-dong has unveiled ‘Possible Love,’ a Venice Film Festival competition entry marking his first feature since 2018. The film follows Mi-ok, a mask factory worker navigating her husband Ho-seok’s job loss and the subsequent labor strike, whose life becomes entangled with Ye-ji, a filmmaker documenting laid-off workers, and Ye-ji’s wealthy husband Sang-woo. As Mi-ok develops a bond with Ye-ji while experiencing an unnamed attraction to Sang-woo, the intersection of the two couples begins to destabilize both marriages.
Lee developed the project over nearly two decades, initially attempting to adapt a 2009 workers’ strike and 70-day labor action at a major Korean company into fiction. He abandoned the effort repeatedly, uncertain whether dramatizing real workers’ suffering held artistic merit compared to documentary treatment. The project gained new direction when co-writer Oh Jung-mi proposed pairing the workers’ story with a parallel narrative about a filmmaker—a structural choice that allowed Lee to explore questions he has pursued since his novelist days about the ethics of depicting others’ lives on screen.
The director frames the film’s title and central inquiry around the concept of love that can exist, rather than the impossible love central to his previous works. He situates the narrative within broader themes of desire and inequality, referencing the tenth commandment against coveting and filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski’s ‘Dekalog’ to examine human longing within capitalist society. The distance separating the two couples, Lee suggests, extends beyond traditional class conflict into questions of wealth and capital accumulation.
Jeon Do-yeon reunites with Lee nearly 20 years after ‘Secret Sunshine,’ identifying with Mi-ok’s internal anxiety and reframing the character’s attraction to Sang-woo as curiosity rather than desire. Sul Kyung-gu returns to Lee’s direction for the first time in 24 years following ‘Oasis,’ citing the director’s reputation as motivation for committing before reading the script. Both actors note their comfort with Lee’s creative approach and the significance of character-driven work amid changing industry conditions.
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