No Other Choice

Official Selection, 2025 Venice Film Festival
Opening Film, 2025 Busan International Film Festival

Poor loyal Man-su. Man-su gave 25 years to Solar Paper, climbing just high enough for a company gift of eel steaks. But after the Americans take over, Man-su is ingloriously fired. His family has to downsize, even give up Netflix! What’s a man(su) to do? When a coveted job finally opens at rival Moon Paper, Man-su hatches a diabolical plan: kill off the competition. Except murdering-novice Man-su becomes as fascinated by his brothers-in-pulp’s lives as he is with ending them. Not to mention, Man-su lives in a Park Chan-wook labyrinth littered with wailing corporate discards, slippery stakeouts, exuberantly pivoting wives (Crash Landing on You’s Son Ye Jin), teenage death-stares, a Viet Cong gun, sabotaging shafts of sunlight, and one of the most unforgettable murder scenes of all time. Giddy, blackly comedic, and visceral, NO OTHER CHOICE follows one man with the single-mindedness of titans to reclaim his life as a middle manager.

Add NO OTHER CHOICE’s delirious hilarity to the Park Chan-wook (Old Boy, The Handmaiden) toolbox we’ve come to love–twisty dystopia, dazzling mayhem, fight-or-flight heroes, allegorical violence–all swirling in Park’s drunken genre cocktail of suspenseful thriller, family melodrama, biting satire, and a dash of romantic comedy. Close to 20 years in the making, Park re-teams with Lee Byung-hun (Concrete Utopia, SDAFF ’23, Joint Security Area) for an indispensable satire about today’s ultimate throwaway commodity.

– Christina Ree

Co-presented by Ajumma EXP.