South Korean director Lee Chang-dong returns to feature filmmaking after an eight-year hiatus with "Possible Love," which premieres in competition at this year's Venice Film Festival. Lee, best known for "Burning" (2018), says the long gap stemmed from what he calls his "pathological timidity" and a period of self-doubt over whether he was the right person to tell this particular story, which touches on labour rights and corporate layoffs in Korea.

The nearly three-hour film, co-written with Oh Jung-mi, follows two married couples whose lives intersect: Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon) and her husband Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu), who was laid off after a workplace incident, and Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong), a documentary filmmaker examining laid-off workers' lives, alongside her wealthy husband Sang-woo (Zo In-sung). Lee had originally shelved the project years earlier after struggling to justify dramatising real labour disputes, only reviving it when Oh suggested framing it through a documentary filmmaker's perspective. Netflix will release "Possible Love" in cinemas on 23 October before it streams from 6 November.