▲ South Korean director Lee Chang-dong attends a publicity event for the upcoming Netflix movie "Possible Love" in Seoul on Aug. 25, 2026. (Yonhap)

 

SEOUL, Sept. 3 (Yonhap) -- South Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong will become the first Korean to receive the Auteur Award at the Mill Valley Film Festival, which will be held in the San Francisco area next month, Netflix said Thursday. 

 

The Mill Valley Film Festival, organized by the California Film Institute, is one of the prestigious film festivals in the United States and will hold its 49th edition this year. The Auteur Award honors a filmmaker's body of work and cinematic achievements.

 

Lee's latest Netflix film, "The Possible Love," has been invited to the festival's Spotlight program, which showcases new works by artists who have established distinctive creative worlds.

 

"The Possible Love" follows two couples — a laid-off worker and his wife, and a documentary filmmaker and her husband — who meet while working on a documentary project. Sol Kyung-gu and Jeon Do-yeon play the laid-off worker Ho-seok and his wife Mi-ok, respectively. Jo Yeo-jeong plays Ye-ji, a director making a documentary about mass layoffs at a major conglomerate, while Jo In-sung plays her husband, Sang-woo.

 

The film will have its world premiere in the competition section of the 83rd Venice Film Festival, which opened Sept. 2 (local time). It will be released in select South Korean theaters on Sept. 23 and become available on Netflix on Nov. 6.

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