Lee Chang-dong returns to filmmaking at Venice as Bangladeshi film bows
Developed over time first seen 2 months ago
South Korean director Lee Chang-dong has ended an eight-year hiatus from feature filmmaking with Possible Love, which premiered in Competition at the Venice Film Festival, running alongside Rubaiyat Hossain's The Difficult Bride, the first Bangladeshi film selected for the festival's Horizons section. Lee, whose last feature was 2018's Burning, told Deadline his prolonged absence stemmed from "pathological timidity" and lingering doubt over whether he was the right person to tell a story rooted in labour rights, having initially shelved the project before returning to it with co-writer Oh Jung-mi.
The nearly three-hour film stars Jeon Do-yeon and Sul Kyung-gu as a married couple whose lives become entangled with a documentary filmmaker, played by Cho Yeo-jeong, and her wealthy husband, played by Zo In-sung, after Sul's character loses his job. Inspired by a real Korean conglomerate's mass layoffs and the strike that followed, the film also pays tribute to Krzysztof Kieślowski's Dekalog and explores filmmakers' ethical responsibility when depicting others' suffering. Netflix will release Possible Love in cinemas on 23 October before it streams from 6 November.
- Sources
- 2
- Outlets
- 2
- Left · Centre · Right
- 0 · 0 · 0
In short
- Lee Chang-dong ends eight-year hiatus with Possible Love at Venice
- Film explores labour rights via intertwined couples' stories
- Netflix release: cinemas 23 October, streaming from 6 November
How this story developed
- 2 months ago Coverage widened beyond Lee's own account to frame both selections as landmark moments for Venice, detailing Hossain's plot about a bride named Zaineen fighting for bodily autonomy and adding that both films will travel on to further festival berths in London as well as Toronto.
- 2 months ago Lee Chang-dong's first feature since Burning, Possible Love, premiered in Competition at Venice alongside Rubaiyat Hossain's The Difficult Bride, the first Bangladeshi film chosen for Horizons, with Lee revealing to Deadline that self-doubt over tackling a labour-rights story had delayed him for eight years, and Netflix confirming a 23 October cinema release ahead of a 6 November streaming date.
Full account
Two very different films are drawing attention at this year's Venice Film Festival: the market comeback of celebrated South Korean director Lee Chang-dong after an eight-year absence from features, and the first Bangladeshi film ever selected for the festival. The pairing highlights how Venice continues to showcase both established auteurs and emerging national cinemas on the same stage.
Lee Chang-dong's new film, Possible Love, premieres in the main Competition strand, marking his first feature since 2018's acclaimed Burning. Co-written with Oh Jung-mi, who also worked on Burning, the nearly three-hour drama follows two married couples whose lives become entangled: Mi-ok and her husband Ho-seok, whose job loss has left him withdrawn from his family, and a documentary-maker, Ye-ji, whose project on redundant workers brings her into close, uneasy contact with Mi-ok. Lee has said the long gap arose partly from what he calls his own timidity and his uncertainty about whether he was the right person to dramatise a real-life story of mass layoffs and labour unrest that inspired the script, having initially shelved the project years earlier. Netflix has scheduled a cinema release for 23 October, with the film reaching the streaming platform on 6 November.
The other notable premiere, screening in Venice's Horizons section, is The Difficult Bride, directed by Rubaiyat Hossain and billed as the first Bangladeshi feature ever selected for the festival. The film centres on a bride-to-be, played by newcomer Zaineen Chowdhury Karim, whose wedding preparations at a Dhaka beauty salon descend into a surreal, bodily ordeal, blending supernatural and grotesque imagery with a feminist critique of beauty standards. Hossain has traced the story back to a real death she heard about as a child while visiting a Dhaka salon with her mother, an image she says stayed with her for decades before it was first attempted as a short film in 2006 and eventually reworked into a feature.
Hossain frames the film as the concluding part of an informal trilogy about Bangladeshi womanhood across class lines, following her earlier works on middle-class and working-class women, with this new film turning to the country's wealthiest social circles. She has stressed that women themselves can help enforce oppressive beauty and social norms, resisting a simple men-versus-women reading of the story, while also weaving in glancing references to Bangladesh's political unrest and the policing of women's behaviour, without presenting the film as a direct commentary on any single period of upheaval.
Where outlets differ
From the full account, which is AI-written from the sources:
Variety's account focuses on Rubaiyat Hossain and The Difficult Bride, emphasising the personal, autobiographical origins of the story, its feminist and gender-studies framing, and its place within Hossain's wider body of work about Bangladeshi women across social classes.
Deadline's account centres on Lee Chang-dong and Possible Love, framing the story around his long hiatus from filmmaking, his personal doubts about tackling a labour-rights narrative, and practical release details via Netflix, presented largely through a direct interview format.
The two reports cover unrelated films and directors bundled under a shared Venice Film Festival dateline; neither source directly comments on or cross-references the other's subject.
Explained simply
Lee Chang-dong is a South Korean film director best known for acclaimed dramas such as Poetry and Burning, the latter released in 2018. He has not made a feature film since then, and his new project, Possible Love, is being seen as a long-awaited comeback. It stars established Korean actors Jeon Do-yeon and Sul Kyung-gu, and centres on a married couple whose lives become entangled with another couple after a job loss, touching on themes of labour and class.
The film has premiered in Competition at the Venice Film Festival, one of the world's most prestigious cinema events, where new works are judged for major awards. Alongside it, The Difficult Bride by Bangladeshi director Rubaiyat Hossain is notable for being the first Bangladeshi film ever selected for Venice's Horizons section, which showcases new trends in world cinema. Its inclusion marks a rare moment of international recognition for Bangladeshi filmmaking.
Both films are due to be shown again at the Toronto International Film Festival, another major stop on the annual awards-season festival circuit, and Possible Love has a commercial release planned through Netflix later this year.
Coverage · 2 sources
Americas Asia Entertainment Film World