Lee Chang-dong's 'Possible Love' Is Redefining Korea's Awards Season Play

A Director Returning, and the World Noticing

Lee Chang-dong hasn’t released a film in eight years. His last work, “Burning,” premiered at Cannes in 2018 and became one of the most discussed Korean films of the decade—a slow-burn adaptation of a Murakami story that nonetheless felt unmistakably rooted in the tensions of contemporary South Korea. When news broke that his follow-up, “Possible Love” (간단한 사랑), had been selected for the Gala Section of the BFI London Film Festival, the industry took notice. Not because another big-name director had premiered at a festival—that happens every year. But because Lee Chang-dong has never been invited to London six separate times with his own films. That is not an ordinary track record. That is a marker of sustained, international recognition that most living directors, anywhere in the world, do not accumulate.

The list reads like a résumé of Korean cinema’s most critically honored era: “Oasis,” “Secret Sunshine,” “Poetry,” “Burning” and, now, “Possible Love.” Each selection represented a moment when global film festivals pivoted toward Korea. What is different this time is the velocity. The film has already appeared at Venice, Toronto, New York, San Sebastian, Zurich, and Vancouver. It has won the Ebert Director Award at Toronto—a first for a Korean director—and the Auteur Award at Mill Valley, another first. This is not merely a festival run. It is a campaign in motion.

What the Film Actually Is

“Possible Love” centers on two couples whose lives intersect through the making of a documentary. One couple consists of a laid-off worker and his wife. The other is a documentary filmmaker and her husband. The film, as described in its festival materials, follows how these two pairs confront the divergent trajectories and private desires that define their separate worlds. It stars Jeon Do-yeon, Seol Gyeong-gu, Jo In-sung, and Jo Yeo-jeong—four of South Korea’s most internationally recognized actors, each of whom has built careers that cross into Western markets. Their casting is not accidental. It signals that Lee Chang-dong, even after an eight-year hiatus, still commands the same gravitational pull over Korea’s leading performers.

The subject matter matters too. A film about documentary makers, labor displacement, and the friction between personal ambition and working-class reality is precisely the kind of materially grounded, morally serious work that festival programmers have rewarded Lee with for twenty-five years. It is also the kind of film that tends to travel well outside Korea—not because it universalizes its specifics, but because it refuses to simplify them. Western critics have long praised Lee for exactly this refusal. “Possible Love” appears to offer more of the same.

The Awards Calendar Is Already Shaped

This is the detail most English-language coverage will miss until November: “Possible Love” has already been chosen as South Korea’s official submission for the International Feature Film category at the 99th Academy Awards. That means the Oscar race is not a question of if the film will compete. It is a question of how far it goes. Korea has sent films to that category since 2000. It has won once—with “Parasite,” which competed in Best Picture rather than International Feature. It has placed in the top five several times. But no Korean film submitted under the current voting rules has ever been nominated for Best Picture. Lee Chang-dong’s name carries weight in the Academy’s acting and directing branches. The question is whether the film’s themes—labor, immigration-adjacent displacement, the ethics of observation—will resonate with a voting body that has, in recent years, responded most strongly to films about American identity and systemic crisis.

The timing of the release adds another layer. The film opens in South Korean theaters on September 23 and streams globally on Netflix on November 6. That Netflix release window places it squarely in the awards conversation in a way that few non-English films manage. Streaming platforms have changed the mechanics of international Oscar campaigns, granting films access to wider audiences and, crucially, to the Academy membership itself. A Korean-language film distributed by Netflix is no longer a logistical afterthought. It is a structural advantage.

What This Means for Korea’s Cultural Position

The deeper story here is not about one film’s festival itinerary. It is about what it signals for South Korea’s cultural infrastructure. For decades, the global recognition of Korean cinema operated on a pattern: a small group of auteurs—Lee Chang-dong, Hong Sang-soo, Kim Ki-duk (before his fall), Park Chan-wook—received repeated invitations to major festivals. The industry outside that core was rarely tracked. “Parasite” broke that pattern by proving that a Korean film could win at the highest level across all categories, not just in competition slates. But “Parasite” was also a singular event. It created an expectation that Korean cinema would continue to produce award-winning blockbusters in the art-house sense. It did not.

What “Possible Love” demonstrates is that the older model—the auteur-driven, festival-circuit path—remains viable and, in some ways, more durable. Lee Chang-dong is not chasing a genre. He is not making a thriller, a horror film, or a historical epic designed for mass export. He is making a meditative, dialogue-heavy film about two families navigating economic precarity and personal desire. And the global festivals are still lining up. That the record at London belongs to him alone suggests that the institutions which shape international film taste have not forgotten what they value in Korean work. They value the slow, the uncertain, the formally patient.

Who Wins and Who Misses

The winners are clear. Lee Chang-dong secures his position as Korea’s most consistently honored living filmmaker in the international circuit. Jeon Do-yeon, already an Oscar winner for “The Handmaiden” and “Secret Sunshine,” gets another opportunity to remind voters of her range. Netflix gains a high-profile Korean title with awards momentum, reinforcing its strategy of investing in local-language prestige content. South Korea’s cultural ministry receives indirect validation for its long-standing support of auteur-driven production.

The loser, if there is one, is the assumption that Korean cinema’s global relevance depends on replicating “Parasite.” That film opened a door. “Possible Love” shows that the corridor beyond it is still open—and that it leads to different kinds of work than the one that made the breakthrough. A film about layoffs, documentary ethics, and the impossibility of truly knowing another person’s life is not an easy international sell. That it is being received with the volume of praise described in the source material is not trivial. It is evidence that the architecture of global film festivals still has room for Korean artistry that does not perform its difference for foreign audiences.

What Comes Next

The next twelve months will determine whether “Possible Love” transitions from a festival darling into a sustained awards presence. The Oscar deadline for International Feature eligibility has passed, so the film is locked in as Korea’s submission. Whether it advances to the final shortlist—five films that proceed to voting—depends on campaign strategy, critical momentum, and the broader field of non-English contenders. The Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, and the Guild Awards will serve as early indicators. If “Possible Love” gains traction in those cycles, it could push the conversation toward Best Picture consideration, however unlikely that remains for a Korean-language film.

For English-language film desks, the practical takeaway is straightforward: this is the Korean film of the late-2025 festival season worth tracking. It is not a surprise. It is not an outlier. It is the continuation of a career that has, over twenty-five years, mapped the boundaries of what international institutions are willing to reward from Korea. The fact that no other Korean director has matched Lee’s six-London invitation record says something about how selectively those institutions confer legitimacy. It also says something about how little the calculus has changed, despite the noise around “Parasite” and K-drama exports. The gatekeepers are still there. And they are still choosing Lee Chang-dong.