Grand Jury Prize

Lee's first feature film in eight years follows the intertwined lives of a laid-off worker and his wife, and a documentary maker and her af- affluent husband.

The film won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize at the Venice International Film Festival.

Right, and Lee Chang-dong, you know, he seems to stay away from the limelight for an extremely long period, and then suddenly, you know, come back with award-sweeping works, right? Well, did other artists involved in the project get to collect some honors, too?

Actually, they did.

Director Lee Chang-dong is finally back after eight years, and his new film, Can We Love?, is already making huge waves at the Busan International Film Festival.

The movie, which already won the Grand Jury Prize at Venice, nearly didn't get made at all after Lee stopped production while questioning whether he had the right to tell workers' stories.

But a suggestion to add a documentary director's perspective gave him a way back in.

At the open talk event in Busan, stars Jeon Do-yeon, Sol Kyung-gu, Cho In-sung and Cho Yeo-jung join the director on an outdoor stage packed with fans who showed up early just to grab a seat.

And of course, Fjord, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, that was also submitted by Romania, so that was their official country selection.

The Grand Jury Prize or second place at the Venice Film Festival went to Possible Love from Lee Chang-dong.

This is South Korea's submission for the Oscars.

This will be released on Netflix.

Naza is the documentary film by a pair of Israeli filmmakers, and I want to highlight that.

These are Israeli filmmakers, Jewish Israeli filmmakers, and this film won the grand jury prize at the Venice Film Festival at some point within the last 10 days, I believe, two weeks.

Not only that, it received a 25-minute uninterrupted standing ovation.

Now, many of you listening to this probably already know if you're following this story at all, but if not...

So don't mistake it for this small unit of, you know, a hundred people who are hand selected.

It's a huge unit with thousands of thousands of subunits inside it.

In any case, the movie is based on testimony from 25 soldiers and officers in Shmonimataim who've used IDF intelligence and are vouching that this is what the idf does that the idf uses ai to kill civilians in gaza and like i said the movie won the grand jury prize at the venice film festival and i think most remarkable of all is that it received a 25-minute standing ovation so the people in the audience were So moved by what they saw in this movie that they stood up and applauded for 25 straight minutes, which is really incredible when you think about it.

I've never applauded 25 straight minutes for anything.

The Netflix drama brings together an incredible cast, including Seul Ki-hoon-gu, Jo In-sung, Jo Yoo-jung, and John Do-yeon, who joined virtually, all playing two couples whose lives intertwine through a documentary project, revealing hidden desires and buried class tensions along the way.

This isn't just another film either, since it already snagged the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice International Film Festival and the Best Director Award at Toronto, making it one of Korean cinema's biggest international triumphs this year.

During the conference, Seul Kyung-gu got emotional recalling how he broke down in tears after the Venice screening, while Jo In-sung shared how moved he was watching journalists rush the cast for autographs afterward.

calling it a testament to how far Korean film has come on the world stage.