Burning

Jong-su, a young man with a literature degree who scrapes by doing delivery work and dreams of becoming a writer, runs into Hae-mi, a woman he knew from his old neighborhood, while out on a job. She asks him to look after her cat while she travels to Africa. When she returns, she brings along Ben, a wealthy and enigmatic man she met on her trip. Ben eventually shares a strange hobby with Jong-su, and the uneasy triangle between the three deepens. Hae-mi then disappears, and Jong-su's search for her draws him into suspicion and paranoia.

Lee Chang-dong directed and co-wrote the film with Oh Jung-mi, adapting Haruki Murakami's short story "Barn Burning." It is the sixth feature he directed, following Poetry in 2010, and it came before Possible Love in 2026. Yoo Ah-in plays Jong-su, Steven Yeun plays Ben, and Jun Jong-seo plays Hae-mi, heading a credited cast of 25 that also includes Kim Soo-kyung, Choi Seung-ho and Moon Sung-keun. Ok Gwang-hee produced the Korean-Japanese co-production, which runs 148 minutes and blends drama, mystery and thriller elements.

Made for about 7 million USD, the film took in roughly the same amount worldwide. Audiences rated it 7.4 out of 10 on IMDb from over 87,000 votes and 7.4 out of 10 on TMDB from around 1,900 votes, while a critics' rating of 8.6 out of 10 from 197 reviews places it noticeably higher with reviewers than with general viewers.