Six minutes. Just six minutes of applause to transform Venice’s Sala Grande into a place suspended between cinema and emotion.
When the end credits of Possible Love appeared on the screen, the audience at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival rose to its feet. Applause filled the theater, accompanied by cheers, while the emotion on the faces of the protagonists became increasingly difficult to hide.
Six minutes of standing ovation—some sources timed it at around six and a half minutes—that probably could have continued even longer, had the director and the actors not been escorted toward the exit of the Sala Grande. And perhaps this is precisely the most beautiful image of Lee Chang-dong’s return: not that of a master returning to be celebrated, but that of a man surrounded by his actors, watching an entire theater give back to him, through applause, everything his cinema had just given them.
Beside him, Sul Kyung-gu and Zo In-sung were unable to hold back their tears. Sul Kyung-gu covered his face, wiping his eyes several times; Zo In-sung too, initially smiling, eventually allowed himself to be overwhelmed by emotion. Jeon Do-yeon and Cho Yeo-jeong welcomed the applause with smiles, while the cast embraced one another and shared with Lee Chang-dong a moment destined to remain among the most moving images of this year’s Venice Film Festival.
Two couples, two worlds, one question: is love still possible?
Possible Love, original title Ga-neung-han sa-rang (가능한 사랑), tells the story of the encounter between two married couples who belong to profoundly different realities.
On one side are Mi-ok, played by Jeon Do-yeon, and her husband Ho-seok, played by Sul Kyung-gu. He is a worker who loses his job following a mass layoff; their existence bears the wounds of precariousness, hardship, and a life that has slowly worn away something within their marriage as well. On the other side are Ye-ji, played by Cho Yeo-jeong, a documentary filmmaker from a privileged background, and her husband Sang-woo, played by Zo In-sung.
Ye-ji wants to make a documentary about laid-off workers and, through the film she is trying to create, enters the lives of Ho-seok and Mi-ok. From that moment on, the boundaries slowly begin to blur. The two couples observe one another, grow closer, confront each other, and inevitably end up looking within themselves as well. Social differences, frustrations, unspoken desires, attractions, and questions that may have remained unanswered for far too long begin to emerge. And behind the private story of the four protagonists, something much larger comes into view: contemporary Korea, its social wounds, the relationship between labor and capital, the trauma of layoffs, and the dignity of those who try to keep living when their world seems to have been suddenly erased. The project in fact also stems from Lee Chang-dong’s reflections on mass layoffs and the violent suppression of a strike that left a profound mark on South Korean society.
But Lee Chang-dong does not seem interested in offering simple answers; what interests him is the human being—the fragile, contradictory human being, capable of desiring what they should not desire and, at the same time, of desperately continuing to seek a connection with someone else.
And this is where the title Possible Love takes on all its power.
What kind of love is still possible?
Is it possible to love when life has changed us?
When marriage has lost some of its original light?
When we belong to worlds that are too far apart?
When we desire a life different from the one we have built?
Lee Chang-dong’s possible love is not the perfect love of fairy tales, but an imperfect one.
The return of a master
The emotion of Venice takes on an even deeper meaning when we consider that Possible Love marks Lee Chang-dong’s return to feature filmmaking after eight years, since Burning in 2018. It is also his return to competition in Venice after almost a quarter of a century: in 2002, with Oasis, he won the Silver Lion for Best Director. From Green Fish to Peppermint Candy, from Oasis to Secret Sunshine, from Poetry to Burning, Lee Chang-dong has built a cinema that rarely raises its voice. He prefers to approach the wounds of his characters slowly, allowing silences, glances, and contradictions to tell what words cannot express. With Possible Love, he also reunites with two key performers from his filmography: Jeon Do-yeon, who under his direction in Secret Sunshine won the Best Actress award at Cannes in 2007, and Sul Kyung-gu, who previously starred in Peppermint Candy and Oasis. Alongside them are Cho Yeo-jeong, known around the world also thanks to Parasite, and Zo In-sung, completing a quartet of extraordinary intensity.
Venice rises to its feet
After 164 minutes, the story comes to an end, the lights of the Sala Grande come back on, and for a few moments, what belonged to the screen seems to continue living inside the theater.
Then the applause begins.
The audience rises and the cast turns toward the crowd that continues to applaud. Sul Kyung-gu cries. Zo In-sung wipes his eyes. Jeon Do-yeon and Cho Yeo-jeong smile. The actors embrace and gather around Lee Chang-dong. Suddenly, those six minutes seem to tell us something that no review could ever fully explain.
Can we love each other, despite everything?
Perhaps Venice did not find the answer, but for those six long minutes, standing before Lee Chang-dong and his actors, it almost seemed as though it wanted to tell him yes.
And once again, Korea surprises us
And here we are, once again.
It is South Korea crossing thousands of miles to reach us and give us another emotion. It has done so through music, series, literature, and art, and it continues to do so through a cinema capable of speaking a universal language: the language of feelings.
A culture that once seemed distant is now, almost on tiptoe, winning over our Western world as well, reminding us that when it comes to love, loneliness, fears, and dreams, there is no East and West: there are only human beings.
Possible Love will arrive in selected South Korean theaters on September 23, 2026, and will be available worldwide on Netflix from November 6, 2026. The film has also been selected by South Korea as its national submission for the Best International Feature Film category at the 99th Academy Awards.
Video sourced from the Poles Live YouTube channel. © Poles Live
