After winning over the hearts of audiences and the jury at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, it’s been quiet in the house of A24 when it comes to the release of Lee Isaac Chung’s tender drama Minari. Following a Korean-American family that moves to Arkansas as they seek the American Dream, we now finally have the beautiful first trailer. A24 has also revealed that while a specific release date is still to be determined, the film––starring Steven Yeun, Han Ye-ri, Youn Yuh-jung, Will Patton, Alan Kim, and Noel Kate Cho––will arrive in time for Oscars consideration by the end of February 2021.
I said in my review, “There is no shortage of films that depict the pains of assimilation and the pursuit of the American Dream for a more promising future. It’s been customary for these stories to tell of journeys from another country to a metropolis somewhere across the land of the free. When it comes to the family of Minari, however, they’ve already been living the United States for some time, carving out a life for themselves on the West Coast. Yet Jacob (Steven Yeun) has dreams beyond separating chickens into male and female bins as a cog in industrialized farming and so he moves his Korean-American family to the rural outskirts of Arkansas where he and his wife Monica (Yeri Han) continue the same job, all while attempting to build a more fruitful living with their own farm featuring Korean produce. All the joys and struggles of this journey are captured with a keen, warm tenderness by Lee Isaac Chung, whose carefully-considered drama deserves to be a breakthrough for the writer-director, who now has five features to his name.”
See the trailer and poster below for the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award winner.
A tender and sweeping story about what roots us, Minari follows a Korean-American family that moves to a tiny Arkansas farm in search of their own American Dream. The family home changes completely with the arrival of their sly, foul-mouthed, but incredibly loving grandmother. Amidst the instability and challenges of this new life in the rugged Ozarks, Minari shows the undeniable resilience of family and what really makes a home.
