Eight Years After 'Burning,' Lee Chang-dong Returns with a Film the NYFF Calls His Most Wide-Ranging Yet

Lee Chang-dong's upcoming film A Possible Love has been selected for the Main Slate section of the 64th New York Film Festival, Netflix confirmed on August 6. It is the fourth time the director has received that invitation, more than any other Korean filmmaker, following Secret Sunshine (2007), Poetry (2010), and Burning (2018).

The Main Slate is the festival's central programming section, reserved for work by established masters and closely watched new voices. Among Korean films previously featured there are Bong Joon-ho's Parasite (2019) and Park Chan-wook's Decision to Leave (2022) and No Way Out (2025). That Lee has now appeared four times in that section, across nearly two decades, is a measure of how consistently his work has been received outside Korea at the level of major international cinema.

Dennis Lim, the festival's artistic director, described A Possible Love as the most expansive film in Lee's body of work. "It encompasses nearly every force that governs our lives," Lim wrote in the festival's programming notes, citing labor, class, capital, art, desire, and family, adding that the film confronts the present moment directly while reaching beyond it.

The film follows two married couples who meet during the production of a documentary, and whose hidden desires surface through that encounter. Sol Kyung-gu and Jeon Do-yeon play Ho-seok, a laid-off worker, and his wife Mi-ok. Jo Yeo-jeong and Jo In-sung play the documentary director Ye-ji and her husband Sang-woo. The ensemble brings together some of the most respected actors in Korean cinema, and the project is Lee's first since Burning, a gap of eight years.

A Possible Love was produced by Netflix, an arrangement that gives the film an unusually broad distribution path for an art-house title: a world premiere in competition at the 83rd Venice Film Festival, a theatrical run in Korea beginning September 23, and a Netflix release on November 6. The New York Film Festival runs September 25 through October 12.

For an industry accustomed to debating what streaming means for prestige cinema, the film's trajectory is worth noting. Netflix has been investing in Korean auteur projects with festival ambitions, and Lee's return after a long absence, with a major cast and a Venice competition slot already confirmed, is the kind of event that gives those investments their clearest argument.