Lee Chang-dong's 'Possible Love' selected for Venice Film Festival competition

Director Lee Chang-dong's new film "Possible Love" has been selected for the competition section of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, set to open in September.

The festival announced the 20 competition titles — including "Possible Love" — at a press conference Thursday, according to Yonhap. The selection marks the second consecutive year a Korean film has competed at Venice, following director Park Chan-wook's entry last year. "Possible Love" becomes the 12th Korean film ever to reach the competition section.

It is the first time a Lee Chang-dong film has competed at Venice since "Oasis" in 2002 — a gap of 24 years. "Oasis" won the director's prize, the best new actress award for Moon So-ri and the FIPRESCI prize.

"Possible Love" follows two couples who meet during the making of a documentary. A laid-off worker and his wife, and a documentary director and her husband, find themselves confronting each other's contrasting lives and hidden desires.

The film is Lee's first feature since "Burning" (2018) and was produced by Netflix. It stars a cast of proven performers — Jeon Do-yeon, Sul Kyung-gu, Jo In-sung and Jo Yeo-jeong — drawing strong interest.

Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera called Lee "one of the great Korean directors" and said the film was "inspired by one of the episodes of Krzysztof Kieślowski's 'Dekalog' (1989)."

"Dekalog" is a 10-part TV drama series by the Polish director Kieślowski — known for films including "A Short Film About Killing" (1988) and "Three Colors: Blue" (1993) — drawn from the biblical Ten Commandments.

Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda's "Look Back" also earned a competition berth. The film is a live-action adaptation of a coming-of-age manga about two girls bound by a passion for drawing, based on the work of the same name by Tatsuki Fujimoto, the creator of "Chainsaw Man."

Kore-eda's selection follows his competition entry at the 79th Cannes International Film Festival last May with "The Lamb," making him a rare presence in both major festival competitions this year.

Other competition titles include Danny Boyle's "Ink," Casey Affleck's directorial effort "The Company," Werner Herzog's "Bucking Fastard" starring Kate Mara and Rooney Mara, and Martin McDonagh's "Wild Horse Nine."

Venice ranks alongside Cannes and Berlin as one of the world's three leading film festivals. Competition titles vie for the Golden Lion, the festival's top prize. This year's edition runs Sept. 2–12, local time.

In 2012, Kim Ki-duk's "Pieta" became the first Korean film to win the Golden Lion. Last year, Park's film earned a competition slot for the first time in 13 years but did not win an award.