Write On with 'Minari' Writer-Director Lee Isaac Chung

Winner of the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film, Minari is the story of a Korean family who start a farm in Arkansas in the 1980s. For Writer-Director Lee Isaac Chung, the film is deeply personal. “It’s really a family story… a journey that this family takes to understand each other a little better,” Lee tells Write On host Phil Galasso. “The story originated with an exercise that I was doing writing down as many memories as I could, from the age of about 5 years old up to 8 years old.”

 

Lee discusses a writing method he uses that he learned from Steven Soderbergh, how he decided in his last year of college as a science major that he really wanted to be a filmmaker, and how he had no idea what would happen with the script for Minari after he wrote it. “I thought, maybe I’m just going to write this because it means so much to me, and I don’t know if it’ll get made, but at least maybe my daughter will read it one day.”

 

Minari is now available on VOD and in theaters where it is safe.

 

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