Lee Chang-dong's Venice prize film explores Korean labour crisis

Summarised from 2 outlets · Updated 24 Oct, 13:44 · Archive

Director Lee Chang-dong's film Possible Love, which won the grand jury prize at Venice, is inspired by 2009 mass layoffs at a Korean conglomerate.

Director Lee Chang-dong's seventh feature film, Possible Love, won the grand jury prize at Venice and is inspired by true events from 2009 when a Korean conglomerate laid off a third of its workforce – approximately 2,600 employees. After the layoffs, many workers died by suicide and reports emerged of long-term mental health issues.

The film picks up with characters in the aftermath of redundancy rather than capturing the labour struggle itself. It opens with an epigraph: 'Thou shall not covet', and follows characters who covet each other's jobs, designer clothes, spouses and social position. The cast includes Jeon Do-Yeon as a long-suffering wife, Sul Kyung-gu as her laid-off husband, Cho Yeo-jeong as a documentary filmmaker, and Zo In-sung as a wealthy husband.

Lee says the idea originated from a 2009 standoff at Ssangyong Motors where workers staged a historic 77-day strike and factory occupation that was eventually broken up by riot police. He initially shelved the project, uncertain about his right to tell the workers' story. After years of reflection and multiple script drafts – including one with post-apocalyptic elements – he and co-writer Oh Jung-mi eventually introduced a documentary filmmaker character, allowing Lee to explore his ambivalence about his intentions through the film itself.

How it is being reported

• Lee Chang Dong ponders the ethics of the cameraLee Chang Dong's seventh feature film, Possible Love, is inspired by true events from 2009, when a Korean conglomerate fired a third of its staff - 2,600 employees - after which many died by suicide. Possible Love is the latest in a long line of Lee movies that engage with themes of class or labor […]The Verge · 24 Oct, 13:30
• ‘Fighting an impossible fight is the only way to reclaim dignity’: Lee Chang-dong on class warfare and his searing Oscar contenderThe auteur’s new film – a study of labour, capital and the fallout of redundancy – won the grand jury prize at Venice. Telling tales of the disenfranchised is ‘our moral responsibility’, he says A quintessential 21st-century horror story: a private equity firm has set its sights on your company. That’s the premise behind director Lee Chang-dong’s new film, Possible Love, and the idea for it first came more than a decade ago, when mass layoffs resulted in a standoff that “fundamentally changed the Korean labour movement”. In 2009, workers at Ssangyong Motors company protested against plans to…The Guardian · 23 Oct, 13:00

In this story: Lee Chang-dong · Ssangyong Motors · Korea · Venice · Jeon Do-Yeon · Cho Yeo-jeong

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