Possible Love

1. Premise

A story of two married couples — a laid-off worker and his spouse, and a documentary filmmaker and her spouse — crossing paths to film a documentary and facing their different lives and hidden desires.^[2]

2. Cast

• Jeon Do-yeon as Mi-ok
  • Jo Yu-ri as young Mi-ok
• Sul Kyung-gu as Ho-seok
• Zo In-sung as Sang-woo
• Cho Yeo-jeong as Ye-ji

3. Production

A co-production by South Korea and United States, it's produced by Pinehouse Film, Anonymous Content and NOWFILM.^[3]

The film was originally part of Maciej Musiał's project to remake all ten episodes of Krzysztof Kieślowski's Dekalog as feature films, alongside Asghar Farhadi's Parallel Tales.^[4] According to Lee, once Netflix joined the project, the "project fell into an ambiguous state. Although this film originated from there, it does not adapt an episode of Dekalog and is a completely different story. However, it is related to one of the commandments."^[5][6] Lee's first draft of what became Possible Love had been written over a decade prior. Upon reading the finished script, Netflix immediately signed on and "guaranteed [Lee] artistic autonomy."^[6]

Jung Jae-il was hired to compose the score.^[7]

4. Release

The film had its world premiere in the main competition of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival on September 6, 2026,^[2] where it won the FIPRESCI Prize.^[8] It will also screen at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival,^[9] and in the Main Slate of the 2026 New York Film Festival.^[10]

Possible Love was released first in South Korean cinemas on September 23, it will be followed by select U.S. theaters on October 23, and will be released worldwide by Netflix on November 6.^[11]

It was also selected as the South Korean entry for the Best International Feature Film category for the 99th Academy Awards, marking director Lee's fourth film selected, following Oasis (2002), Secret Sunshine (2007), and Burning (2018).^[12]

5. Reception

5.1. Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 100% of 38 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.7/10.^[13] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 93 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".^[14]

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian rated the film 4 out of 5 stars, describing it as "a finely judged, beautifully acted and rather novelistic work".^[15]

5.2. Accolades