Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Sundance ’20: Minari


We recruited Angelica Sakurada to cover Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, because we had a hunch she would have strong handle on its themes. As a courtesy to us, her review and photo of the post-screening Q&A follow below:

This is a great movie that beautifully tells the story of a Korean immigrant family struggling very hard to make the American Dream come true, working by day for large chicken farms (“chick sexing” is what they do) and growing their own family farm during any extra time. Everyone that had the parents or grandparents who were immigrants in any part of the world will immediately connect to their experiences: low paid jobs that are not enough to achieve the ultimate goal, the dream to own a piece of land (or start their own business) and feeling pride at the achievement, the home sickness, the challenge of raising kids in a new culture, and finally learning how to live in a place out of your comfort zone while keeping the family united.

Introduced by the Sundance’s director, Minari is an emotionally power film, because of its high-quality direction, photography and editing. The camera angles and background details all really support the drama and the great performances of the entire cast. Steve Yeun is excellent playing the father, but special mention goes to the actor Alan Kim who plays young Daniel. He is so sweet he steals the heart of all the audience.

Highly recommended, Minari screens again today (1/28), Thursday (1/30), and Saturday (2/1) in Park City and Friday (1/31) in Salt Lake.