If you see one film in the cinema before 2026 ends, it should be Possible Love. The long-awaited comeback from Lee Chang-dong, the 72-year-old Korean auteur behind Burning, Possible Love is a riveting, masterful, anti-capitalist drama that reveals new, intricate layers upon rewatch. I’ve seen it three times on the big screen, and each time I appreciated the collective laughs and stunned silences of the room. I’m not an outlier: aside from maybe The Odyssey and You Can See Everything, it’s the best-reviewed film of the year, to the extent that online outrage emerged when it only received the second-most prestigious prize at Venice. The cinematography by Kim Ji-yong (a Park Chan-wook regular) is so memorable that whenever I look at the moon, I now think of Possible Love.
Possible Love, as grounded and poetic as it is, has more in common with Squid Game than you might realise. Both were inspired by the events of 2009, when a Pyeongtaek-based company, Ssangyong Motor, announced they would sack around a third of their employees. After 77 days of barricading themselves inside the plant, protesters were viciously beaten by police commandos with batons while helicopters dropped tear gas from above. Many strikers were left with PTSD, unemployment, or both. In subsequent years, at least 30 former Ssangyong workers or their family members died by suicide.
In Squid Game, the protagonist is a former employee at Dragon Motor (wordplay on Ssangyong) who we see in a flashback being beaten up by police during a demonstration. Lee also attempted to write a script about the 2009 strikes. Deciding he wasn’t the right person for the job, Lee instead made Burning, a thriller about the malaise of young people searching for employment. Later, Lee’s Burning co-writer, Oh Jung-mi, realised how to reframe the story: in Possible Love, one of the key figures is a filmmaker trying to shoot a documentary about fired factory workers. Lee confirms to Dazed that he deliberately gave the privileged character the surname Lee, making her another Director Lee.
“The event that inspired the film was very much buried under the rug by Korean society,” says Lee through an interpreter. “The trauma not only affected the labourers that were laid off and their families, but from that moment the value of labour was ignored and denied in society. However, this is not only something pertaining to Korea. This is a global issue.” In Possible Love, the strikers who remain unemployed refer to themselves as “The Dead”, while those who kept their jobs are “The Living”. “We’re in a world of an unprecedented economic structure where individuals are losing their value and self-identity,” says Lee. “How do we protect human dignity?”
Possible Love starts with the funeral of a former employee of SP Heavy Industries (a fictional version of Ssangyong Motor) who took his own life. Two attendees are Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu from Lee’s Peppermint Candy and Oasis), a sacked co-worker who turned to alcohol after becoming hospitalised during protests, and his wife, Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon from Lee’s Secret Sunshine), a factory clerk who drinks with Ho-seok out of solidarity. Also present is Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong from Parasite), a couture-wearing director who’s making a documentary, and her banker bro husband, Sang-woo (Zo In-sung from Hope). When the couple befriend each other through Ye-ji’s film, Sang-woo privately compliments his wife on her “method acting”; hurt, Ye-ji insists that she genuinely loves “these people”.
The strength of Lee and Oh’s screenplay is that it’s actually true: Ye-ji and Mi-ok bond over soju, gossip, and a bizarre admission of fancying Steve Jobs. Likewise, Sang-woo isn’t a cartoonish villain. The nuances of Mi-ok and Ho-seok’s relationship are even deeper, echoing similar stories to real-life victims of the Ssangyong strikes. Unravelling for nearly three hours, the drama favours long, unhurried takes that allow simmering tensions and flirtations to build, especially when the four stay at Sang-woo’s beach house. In a knowing comment, Mi-ok remarks that she feels like she’s “in a novel”.
When we lose our identity as human beings, what becomes the driving force?
The opening scene has Mi-ok and Ho-seok’s son holding a crisp packet out of a car window, catching the breeze. It’s almost identical to the start of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours: Blue. “When we were shooting the film, I did realise the similarities but that wasn’t deliberate,” says Lee. “But the dog being named Blue is an intentional homage.”
In fact, during the development of Possible Love, Lee was asked to direct a chapter of a proposed remake of Kieślowski’s Dekalog, a ten-part series based on the Ten Commandments. “There were three left for me to choose from. I picked the tenth one, ‘Thou shalt not covet’, because it’s about the human heart, but the other nine are about human action. I thought it’d connect with my story, especially in this capitalist society where we live our lives as if others’ desires are our own desires. I wanted to ask: what would it mean to not covet in this day and age? However, after Netflix came into the picture, we separated from the project.”
Nevertheless, the credits of Possible Love thank Dekalog: Ten, a comic story of two Polish men losing their minds after inheriting an invaluable stamp collection. The parallels are clear. “The nature of Sang-woo’s wealth is that even if he doesn’t need more, he continues to chase profits. Companies go through reorganisations that lead to mass layoffs. Mi-ok and Ho-seok are coveting the happiness and financial prosperity of others. Ye-ji, as a filmmaker, covets the lives of her subjects. Her camera is drawn to the drama and intense pain of others.”
As Lee dislikes rehearsals or overpreparation, Possible Love is full of spontaneity and humanity in its performances. The best example is Mi-ok and Sang-woo’s visit to the beach, a place where the latter, as a child, used to swim naked. Inspired by the anecdote, Mi-ok strips off and enters the water. “Mi-ok thought Ye-ji’s family would understand her family, but at this summer house, she realises they’re taking away her family’s identity,” says Jeon Do-yeon, also through an interpreter, in a separate conversation. “I see her taking off her clothes as a protest against Sang-woo, who represents this authority figure.”
In 2007, Jeon won the Best Actress prize at Cannes for Lee’s Secret Sunshine. In Possible Love, she again brings richness to a character who feels so alive and mischievous, whether it’s the manner in which she starts a union at her workplace, or how she dances barefoot after soju. “The playfulness is Mi-ok’s way of hiding her anxiety,” says the 53-year-old Korean actor. “Her husband went through tragedy, but she wants to portray a different picture to the outside world. You see it when she stops Ye-ji from filming her son doing taekwondo badly.”
Jeon believes the film reveals “a lot of what can be impossible love”, making it a slyly paradoxical title. However, she notes, “The identity of humans and the value of our work is being eroded. That can be due to capitalism, or AI technology representing capitalism. When we lose our identity as human beings, what becomes the driving force? Director Lee puts forth the argument that that really is the power of love. I love that message.”
Already selected as Korea’s Oscar submission, Possible Love is reportedly considered by Netflix to be a major awards contender, with the Hollywood Reporter claiming the streamer will campaign for Jeon in the Best Actress category. Whatever happens, Possible Love will be adored for years to come, and perhaps others will also find new meaning when staring up at the sky. Each character has their own ties to the moon: Ye-ji finds solace in its presence when lost, while Ho-seok claims that beneath his hard exterior his insides are like the moon.
I ask Lee how he landed on his key image. “No matter how much wealth you have, the moon is equal to all,” he says. “You cannot own the moon. The moon cannot be used for personal gain, and it transcends the world we live in. If we all look up at the moon together, it will give us a moment to reflect on our lives as well.”
Possible Love is out in select UK cinemas on October 23, and streaming globally on Netflix from November 6.