Park Chan-wook Returns to Venice With No Other Choice
Back on the Lido two decades later, Park arrives with a contender for Venice, BAFTA, and the Oscars.
August 18, 2025 | By Lisa Hatzenbeller
It’s been twenty years since Park Chan-wook last walked into Venice competition. In 2005, Lady Vengeance earned plenty of respect but left without the Golden Lion. Now, with No Other Choice, he’s back on the Lido with a story that blends genre bite and real-world desperation — and this time, the spotlight feels sharper.
Back then, Lady Vengeance picked up a handful of collateral prizes — Young Lion, Cinema of the Future, Best Innovated Film — but not the one that mattered. The Golden Lion stayed out of reach.
Now Park returns with No Other Choice, a 139-minute dark comedy about a man laid off after twenty-five years who decides the only way to land another job is to eliminate the competition — literally. With Lee Byung-hun and Son Ye-jin leading the cast, it’s Park at his sharpest: mixing genre thrills with a story that cuts straight into the anxieties of our moment.
And that plotline doesn’t just live on the page for me. I was laid off myself a month ago after twenty years in corporate banking. The feeling of being told loyalty no longer matters — that you’re suddenly disposable — is not theoretical. Park just pushes that real-world gut punch into a violent, heightened metaphor. That’s what makes the film feel urgent: it’s about the systems that grind people down, told with the kind of bite only Park can deliver.
The awards stakes make it even more fascinating. Park has built an enviable résumé everywhere but the Oscars. The Handmaiden (2016) won BAFTA’s Best Film Not in the English Language. Decision to Leave (2022) brought him back to BAFTA with nominations for Best Director and Best Film Not in English, while the Academy left him hanging. That film made the International Feature shortlist but still fell short of a nomination — one of the most talked-about misses of the year.
So here we are: Park has unfinished business at Venice, proven ground at BAFTA, and an Oscar mountain still unclimbed. My read? No Other Choice will definitely be in the BAFTA lineup for Best Film Not in the English Language, and this time the Academy won’t be able to ignore him — I’m calling an Oscar nomination for International Feature. The real suspense is whether Venice finally gives him the Golden Lion that slipped away twenty years ago.
What do you think — is this the year Park Chan-wook finally claims Venice, or will the payoff come later with BAFTA and the Oscars? Drop your thoughts on X @OscarObsessADHD or join the conversation on today’s Instagram post @OscarObsessedADHD.
