Winner of the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival for Oldboy, winner of the Cannes Special Jury Prize in 2009 for Thirst, invited to the Main Competition in 2016 with The Handmaiden, and winner of the Best Director Award at Cannes in 2022 with Decision to Leave… Master director Park Chan-wook, who has captivated audiences with his taboo- breaking plots and finely rendered mise-en-scène, is back. With No Other Choice – a story he has long wanted to tell– he presents a film that is completely different from his previous works.
No Other Choice is the story of Man-su, an employee at a paper company who is so satisfied with his life that he can truthfully say to himself, “I’ve got it all.” However, after suddenly being fired, he finds himself in a battle to get re-hired in order to keep the family home he has worked so hard to buy, and to protect his wife and two children. No Other Choice depicts, through the unique perspective of director PARK Chan wook, how an ordinary person tries to overcome the crisis of being suddenly fired and draws deep empathy from the audience through its realistic situations that anyone in modern times could go through. As Man-su faces increasingly cutthroat competition to be re-hired, he comes to consider resorting to extreme measures. The inner conflict he experiences pulls the audience into a tense and unpredictable narrative.
Director Park Chan-wook’s sharp sense of ironic humor instills the distinctive appeal in No Other Choice. The film has an attractive cast of characters that add richness to the drama, including Miri, the strong wife who finds herself facing a crisis; Sun-chul, line manager at the highly successful Moon Paper, Man-su’s aspiration; Bummo and Sijo, job seekers who compete with Man-su for open positions; and Bummo’s wife Ara. With dramatic developments that oscillate between tension and release, sensuous mise-en- scène and meticulous directing, added with black comedy, No Other Choice is a truly original film that will captivate audiences in Korea and around the world
