South Korea Picks Lee Chang-dong's 'Possible Love' for Oscar Submission
South Korea has chosen Lee Chang-dong's Possible Love as its submission for the best international feature category at the 99th Academy Awards, the Korean Film Council announced on August 25 (The Hollywood Reporter).
The film is Lee's first feature in eight years, since 2018's Burning. A 15-member KOFIC selection committee praised Possible Love for its overall achievement, its mise-en-scène — the visual staging and composition of each scene — and what it called Lee's deep humanism, along with its portrait of class, love and desire (The Hollywood Reporter).
The story follows two married couples whose lives become intertwined. A documentary filmmaker named Ye-ji, played by Cho Yeo-jeong, is chronicling laid-off workers when she enters the orbit of Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon), her unemployed husband Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu) and their young son. Zo In-sung rounds out the principal cast. Lee co-wrote the screenplay with Oh Jung-mi, his collaborator on Burning (The Hollywood Reporter).
The cast reunites Lee with actors he has propelled before. Jeon Do-yeon won the Cannes best actress prize for his 2007 film Secret Sunshine. Sul Kyung-gu led two of Lee's earlier works, Peppermint Candy and Oasis (The Hollywood Reporter).
Possible Love will hold its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival, with a North American debut to follow at the Toronto International Film Festival. Lee will also receive the Ebert Director Award at TIFF, a career honour named for the late critic Roger Ebert (The Hollywood Reporter; The Hollywood Reporter). The KOFIC filmography page additionally lists the film in the New York Film Festival's 2026 Main Slate (Korean Film Council).
The release calendar is tight and deliberate. Possible Love opens theatrically in South Korea on September 23, meeting the Academy's country-of-origin theatrical eligibility deadline of September 30. A limited US theatrical release follows on October 23, before the film launches globally on Netflix on November 6 (The Hollywood Reporter). Pinehouse Film, which backed Burning, produced alongside Anonymous Content and NOWFILM.
The KOFIC committee said a Netflix awards campaign is also targeting the best picture category, citing strong interest from North American media and noting that Lee's previous film Burning landed on the Oscar shortlist — the first Korean film to reach that stage, though it missed the final five. Netflix had not publicly commented on its awards strategy at the time of the announcement (The Hollywood Reporter).
For context, Burning was South Korea's submission for the 2018 Oscars and travelled the festival circuit widely, including a stop at the 2019 Tromsø International Film Festival (Korean Film Council). Lee was also announced in June for a lifetime achievement honour at the Malaysian Film Festival, a recognition that arrived while Possible Love was still in post-production (The Hollywood Reporter).
The 99th Academy Awards ceremony is set for March 14, 2027 (The Hollywood Reporter). Between now and then, Possible Love faces a compressed corridor — Venice and Toronto in early autumn, a Korean theatrical bow, a qualifying US run, then a global Netflix drop — all before voters begin weighing the field.
