Lee Isaac Chung's Minari up for foreign-language film gong at Golden Globes; all about it

American director Lee Isaac Chung of Korean descent spoke with the Associated Press on his latest directorial Minari. This film is set in the rural parts of Arkansas in the 80s. It is a family drama about a Korean immigrant family who migrated from Korea to Arkansas, America in search of their American dream. It's a semi-autobiographical take on the director's Chung upbringing. The film is about the difficulties faced by a Korean-migrant family trying to farm a plot of land. The title Minari is a Korean word for the plant Oenanthe Javanica, commonly known Java water, dropwort, Chinese celery and in Japanese, seri.

In the film's trailer the water basin signifies the physical symbol of putting down roots in a foreign land; it denotes Korean American harmony. For director Chung, it's a deeply personal story about his own life. The director got Minari plants from his father, who is growing them in Kansas City. Chung was too afraid to tell anyone and snuck it in crates to his set location at Oklahoma. Chung said, “That wasn’t lost on me”, the minari used in his film Minari which was sowed by Chung's father blooms in the gap between generations.

Speaking from Los Angles, the director said about his father “I think he kind of knew what I was getting at with the film but we were just not talking about it. He wanted to come to the set and see what we were doing but I kind of said no. We had some friction during production, to be honest, and it didn’t go away until I showed him the film and then it kind of alleviated all the tension we had.”

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During the Sundance screening, the makers of the film Chung, Yeun, and producer Christina Oh took their parents for the film screening as it was based on their journey as immigrants in America and it was quite emotional for them. Chung remembered he could hear Steven’s dad getting emotional during the film. He said “When I saw the way those two embraced after the screening, it was almost a mirror image to the way my dad and I embraced after I showed him the film. I guess that feeling felt very new to me.” For the Burning and The Walking Dead actor Yeun, this film is about emotion as his family migrated from Korea when he was just 4. “This movie is a feeling for me. The feeling is the thing that keeps it connected to everybody,” he said it through on phone from Los Angeles. Yeun added, “I don’t know how it’s getting its way out there, specifically. But I just do know the feeling is getting out there.”

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This film is getting praised worldwide in film festivals and had got a Golden Globe nomination but in the Foreign film category which limited its potential because this film is about harvesting the American dream made by Americans in America. This film produced by Plan B Entertianment and distributed by A24.

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