Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love Wins Venice, Heads to Oscars — SkimNews
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- Lee Chang-dong directed Possible Love, a film inspired by the 2009 Ssangyong Motors strike, which he says fundamentally changed South Korea’s labor movement and public perception of workers’ rights.
- Possible Love won the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival and is South Korea’s official submission for Best International Feature at the Oscars, drawing acclaim as one of the year’s best films.
- Netflix funded Possible Love after Lee struggled to secure domestic financing due to the Korean film industry’s structural crisis worsened by pandemic losses and streaming competition.
- Lee Chang-dong co-wrote the film with Oh Jung-mi, experimenting with multiple scripts—including a post-apocalyptic version—before settling on a layered narrative that questions the filmmaker’s gaze and ethical responsibility.
- The film centers on a working-class couple, Ho-seok and Mi-ok, whose lives intersect with a wealthy financier, Sang-woo, and his filmmaker wife Ye-ji, exposing unbridgeable class divides shaped by abstract capital.
- Lee Chang-dong likened his own reliance on corporate funding to Ye-ji’s marriage to capital, calling it the shared fate of filmmakers who must protect their voice while depending on financial power.
Why it matters: South Korean cinema’s global influence grows as *Possible Love* gains Oscar momentum, but its production reveals a material shift: even auteurs like Lee now depend on streaming giants like Netflix to realize politically charged work, altering the independence of artistic dissent.
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