Lee Chang-dong's 164-Minute 'Possible Love' Premieres at Venice, Probing Korea's Class Divide

Q: How did a real-life labor tragedy inspire Lee Chang-dong's highly anticipated return to cinema after an eight-year hiatus?

Lee Chang-dong has said *Possible Love* grew out of a real South Korean labor disaster: the 2009 mass layoffs at a major conglomerate that triggered a long strike and a violent police crackdown, leaving many workers deeply traumatized. He viewed the episode not as an isolated company dispute but as a turning point that exposed how corporate restructuring and job insecurity were reshaping Korean society. That event became the basis for the character of Ho-seok, a laid-off factory worker shattered by losing his job during a strike, and for the film’s wider focus on class tension, dignity and emotional fallout inside families. Lee originally wrote a script about the dispute more than a decade ago because he believed the layoffs sent “a shockwave” through the country and foreshadowed a harsher labor future. But the same tragedy also delayed his return. Lee said he shelved the project for years because he was unsure he had the right to fictionalize workers’ suffering when documentaries had already captured it honestly. He questioned whether turning such pain into drama was justified. He only revived the film after co-writer Oh Jung-mi suggested adding a documentary filmmaker character, allowing Lee to confront the ethics of representing other people’s suffering within the story itself. That reframing helped him turn a real labor tragedy into a broader drama about work, desire, class and the moral responsibilities of art.

3 articles · Updated · IndieWire · Sep 6

Lee Chang-dong unveiled “Possible Love” at Venice with a 164-minute drama centered on two couples pulled together after the violent suppression of a strike at SP Heavy Industries.
Jeon Do-yeon and Sul Kyung-gu play a working-class couple scarred by layoffs and injury, while Cho Yeo-jeong and Zo In-sung portray a wealthy pair whose documentary project exposes condescension, exploitation and unequal power.
The film uses a film-within-a-film setup, a coastal retreat and a final-act shift in physical tension to examine labor, wealth and desire without offering easy class reconciliation.
The Netflix-backed feature is Lee’s first since 2018’s “Burning,” drew a seven-minute ovation at Venice, and will open in theaters on Oct. 23 before streaming Nov. 6.