Lee Chang-dong's first film in eight years has a release plan. Netflix will send Possible Love into limited U.S. and Canadian cinemas on 23 October 2026, with a worldwide streaming launch following on 6 November, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The South Korean director has not released a feature since Burning in 2018, a film that competed at Cannes and went on to wide international acclaim. Possible Love marks his return — and Netflix is positioning it squarely for awards season, that stretch of autumn when studios push prestige titles toward Oscar consideration.

The festival runway is already paved. Possible Love will have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September, screening in the official Venezia 83 competition for the Golden Lion, as confirmed by the Korea JoongAng Daily and the La Biennale di Venezia. It then travels to the Toronto International Film Festival as a gala selection for its North American debut. That Venice-to-Toronto arc is a familiar awards-season launching pad — two major festivals, back to back, each a chance to build critical momentum before the theatrical run begins.

Lee co-wrote the screenplay with Oh Jung-mi, his collaborator on Burning. The cast is led by Jeon Do-yeon, who won the Best Actress prize at Cannes in 2007 for Secret Sunshine, alongside Sul Kyung-gu, Zo In-sung, and Cho Yeo-jeong — a cast stacked with some of the most recognisable names in Korean cinema.

The film is a U.S.-Korea co-production, produced by Pinehouse Film, Anonymous Content, and NOWFILM. Its Korean title is Ga-neung-han sa-rang, and it runs 164 minutes, according to the Venice festival's official listing.

Netflix confirmed the 6 November streaming premiere date in a press release published on 26 July, with Netflix Canada separately confirming the 23 October theatrical date for Canadian screens via its Facebook account. A poster and a first-look still accompanied the announcement, along with a statement from Lee published on Netflix's Tudum site.

The two-week gap between the theatrical and streaming dates is narrower than a traditional release window, but it is the pattern Netflix has used for its awards contenders — a brief cinema run to qualify for and court industry voters, then a swift pivot to the platform where the bulk of the audience sits. For a director whose previous film played in theatres for months, the strategy is a sign of how streaming-era prestige releases now reach audiences: a festival premiere, a short theatrical bow, and then the world.