Lee Changdong on his eightyear gap before Venice return
Lee Chang-dong returns to Venice competition with “Possible Love” eight years after “Burning,” telling Variety the gap was never about leaving cinema. On lee changdong his eightyear pause while accepting a MIFFest Lifetime Achievement Award, he says the honor is encouragement to make better films—and that audiences connect him to something much bigger.
Key Takeaways
- “Possible Love” is headed to Venice competition as Lee’s return eight years after “Burning.”
- At Malaysia’s MIFFest, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award and framed it as future encouragement, not a career look-back.
- He says industry box-office judgments matter less than how audiences encounter his films.
- Hou Hsiao-hsien’s “The Boys From Fengkuei” deeply shaped him; Lee is also a novelist.
Why does Lee Chang-dong’s Venice return matter?
After an eight-year wait, the acclaimed Korean filmmaker is preparing to premiere “Possible Love” in Venice competition. For cinephiles tracking streaming and festival alerts, the comeback puts a major auteur back in the festival spotlight.
Speaking with Variety at the Malaysia International Film Festival (MIFFest), Lee stressed that the long gap was never about stepping away from cinema. The years since “Burning,” he said, changed him both personally and creatively.
What did he say about the MIFFest Lifetime Achievement Award?
Receiving the honor did not push Lee into nostalgia. “It’s not an achievement. It’s more like encouragement that makes me want to make better films in the future,” he told Variety.
“Today, directors are judged by the box office and evaluated by the industry,” he added. “But the key reason I keep making films is the audience – their facial expressions, their encounters with the film. Thanks to cinema, I feel connected to something much bigger.”
How has storytelling shaped Lee’s view of cinema?
“I’ve loved stories since I was young,” Lee said. “I’ve tried to understand life through stories. It’s also how I communicate with audiences. Just as I’m looking for stories, I’m also looking for meaning in life.”
He cited Taiwanese auteur Hou Hsiao-hsien’s 1983 classic “The Boys From Fengkuei” as a film that profoundly shaped him. He first saw it on VHS with English subtitles and later met Hou during a retrospective in South Korea. “When I first saw it, I felt as if I had lived that life,” he recalled. “It was as if I had made the film myself.”
Lee, who is also a novelist, compared reading and watching: “Literature is completed when it reaches the reader. Once someone reads a sentence in a novel, they create their own imagination.”
What does he think about Korean cinema’s global boom?
Asked about Korean film’s growing international influence, Lee said: “It’s very exciting that Korean cinema is receiving so much attention. But I also wonder whether younger filmmakers will be able to sustain this creative energy in the future. I think that’s something all filmmakers should continue thinking about.”
With “Possible Love” bound for Venice, that note lands as both celebration and caution—from a director still chasing meaning through stories, not just industry scorecards.