Park Chan-wook and Lee Byung-hun brought No Other Choice, a black comedy about a laid-off paper expert who murders his rivals, to the festival’s galas.
Park Chan-wook, whose Oldboy won the Grand Prix at Cannes, presented No Other Choice at the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank on Wednesday 15 October 2025. Its lead, Lee Byung-hun, the Front Man of Squid Game, joined him for the gala.
Park was born in Seoul in 1963, studied at Sogang University and wrote film criticism before he directed. Oldboy was the centre of his Vengeance trilogy and carried his name beyond Korea.
The Handmaiden won him the BAFTA for Best Film Not in the English Language. Decision to Leave brought him the Best Director prize at Cannes in 2022.
No Other Choice adapts The Ax, a novel by Donald Westlake. Lee plays Man-su, a papermaking veteran laid off after a buyout, who decides to remove his rivals for the one job left.
Lee was born in Seoul in 1970 and broke through in Park’s Joint Security Area in 2000.
The film had opened in competition at Venice in August and opened the Busan festival in September. It later earned three Golden Globe nominations, among them Best Actor for Lee, and Mubi released it in Britain and Ireland.