He thought his film career was ending. Now this University of Utah alum could win an Oscar

Steven Yeun appears in “Minari” by Lee Isaac Chung. The movie premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and is a major Oscar contender this year. | Provided by the Sundance Institute

Lee Isaac Chung had just completed a biology degree at Yale when he applied to the University of Utah for film studies. Here’s how he became a major Oscar contender

When his movie “Minari” won a Golden Globe, Lee Isaac Chung was beaming. But it was his 7-year-old daughter who stole the show during the acceptance speech.

“I prayed! I prayed! I prayed!” she gleefully shouted as she wrapped her arms tightly around her father’s neck during the virtual ceremony on Feb. 28.

“She’s the reason I made this film,” Chung said with a wide grin.

“Minari,” a semi-autobiographical film about a Korean-American family that moves to rural Arkansas to start a farm, was a breakout hit at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. It’s been dubbed one of the best films of 2020 and holds a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes.

But there was some outcry when the Golden Globes nominated it for best picture in the foreign language category — much of the movie is in Korean, and the Golden Globes mandates that “any film with at least 50% of non-English dialogue” goes into the foreign language category, Deadline reported. The categorization prevented “Minari” from competing in the top categories.

“I have not seen a more American film than #Minari this year,” “The Farewell” director Lulu Wang tweeted. “It’s a story about an immigrant family, IN America, pursuing the American dream. We really need to change these antiquated rules that characterizes American as only English-speaking.”

But the controversy didn’t seem to weigh too heavily on Chung, who subtly alluded to it during his heartfelt acceptance speech at the Golden Globes.

“‘Minari’ is about a family,” said the director, who attended graduate school for film at the University of Utah. “It’s a family trying to learn how to speak a language of its own. It goes deeper than any American language and any foreign language. It’s a language of the heart, and I’m trying to learn it myself and to pass it on, and I hope we’ll all learn how to speak this language of love to each other, especially this year. God bless you all, and thank you.”

That acceptance speech, in all of its earnestness and humility, sums up Chung in a nutshell, said Kevin Hanson, a cinematography professor at the University of Utah who helped review Chung’s application for grad school in the early 2000s.

Chung had just completed a biology degree at Yale when he applied to the U. In the application, Hanson said Chung wrote a letter detailing his belief in the power of film to change people’s lives, noting that he wrote something along the lines of, “I believe I can do more good for other people as a filmmaker than I could as a doctor.”

“And I think he made good on that promise,” Hanson recently told the Deseret News. “I think this movie is as honest a film as I’ve ever seen.”

Two months after winning a Golden Globe, “Minari” could win as many as six Oscars on Sunday, including for best picture, best director and best screenplay. Here’s a look at Chung’s early days in film and his rise to being a major Oscar contender.

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The seeds of ‘Minari’

Hanson has reviewed a number of grad school applications over the years, but 20 years later, Chung’s still stands out in his mind.

He was so struck by the unusual journey from biology to film — Chung had been exposed to world cinema during his senior year at Yale — and the authentic way Chung wrote about his love of film, that he reached out personally with a phone call. They talked for close to an hour.

“He asked great questions,” Hanson recalled. “He was far more interested in what we had to offer in terms of teaching him how to craft stories than he was in things like equipment. Often (people) who come to film school are obsessed with the stuff of filmmaking, and that was never really his thing. His thing was always the stories.”

Chung ended up moving to Salt Lake City for school. When he showed up for Paul Larsen’s screenwriting class, it didn’t take long for Larsen to see this was a student with ideas — an aspiring filmmaker who was eager to tell stories. Although Larsen isn’t much of a lecturer to begin with, he said his approach when it came to teaching Chung was to stay “out of his way.”

During the class, where students read and workshopped their original screenplays, Larsen said Chung wrote a few scenes about growing up on a farm in Arkansas — elements that would eventually become “Minari.”

“I was mesmerized by it,” he said. “It sounded like a wonderful story. I’m glad he eventually developed it into a feature-length screenplay.”

But for Chung, reaching that major point was well over a decade down the road.

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A budding director

A few years after graduating from the U. in 2004, Chung traveled to Rwanda with his wife, Valerie, an art therapist who had previously worked as a volunteer in the country, according to The New York Times. It was there Chung created the film that would launch his film career.

In a matter of two weeks, Chung shot “Munyurangabo,” which tells the story of two friends in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. He shot the film on “a simple little camera” and with “absolutely no budget whatsoever,” Larsen said.

But in 2007, that movie ended up premiering at the Cannes Film Festival and was called “a masterpiece” by the late film critic Roger Ebert.

“I was transfixed by it,” said Larsen, who occasionally has consulted with Chung on his scripts. “It’s a very slow-moving movie — that’s what Isaac does. He picks critical moments in people’s lives, but then just very quietly goes about examining those moments. They’re slower, character-driven pieces that let the most important parts of life play out.”

Chung wrote and directed a couple of other films after that — “Lucky Life” follows a person grappling with a cancer diagnosis, and “Abigail Harm,” starring Amanda Plummer, is inspired by a Korean folktale.

Taylor Jewell/Invision via Associated Press

Director Lee Isaac Chung, left, and Steven Yeun pose for a portrait to promote the film “Minari” at the Music Lodge during the Sundance Film Festival on Monday, Jan. 27, 2020, in Park City, Utah.

But for all of the success Chung found with “Munyurangabo,” his directorial debut, it didn’t get any easier making these smaller, independent films.

“He was kind of worn out and tired of trying to pull it off,” Hanson said. “This is not a privileged Hollywood filmmaker. This is a person who’s struggled to continue to make movies.”

In 2018, Chung turned to academia, teaching film at the University of Utah’s campus in Incheon, South Korea. Around this time, another chance to create a film arose. Believing his filmmaking career was coming to an end, Chung wanted to make the most of the opportunity.

After finishing the academic year, Chung wrote yet another letter to Hanson — who is the film and media arts department liaison for the South Korea campus — detailing how he believed he had one final shot to make a film.

“He told me it was going to be his last movie and he wanted it to be something his daughter would be proud of,” Hanson said. “That was his guiding premise in making the movie.”

“I had no idea that this was the film he was going to make.”

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‘Minari’ comes to life

At the start of “Minari,” a Korean-American family makes a dramatic move to rural Arkansas. Out in the rugged Ozarks, the father dreams of transforming uncultivated land into his own farm. It’s a new start, and he wants his kids to see him succeed.

“This is the best dirt in America,” he proclaims. “Daddy’s gonna make a big garden!”

As they pull up to their isolated farmhouse — a rectangular home propped up on cinder blocks and wheels — you know this isn’t going to be an easy journey. But the tilling begins, and along the way, through the countless challenges of this new life, they slowly unearth what it means to be a family.

Hanson said he wept through about half of the film when he watched it for the first time at the Sundance Festival. He’s seen it two more times since then.

“I have a feeling that I could watch Isaac’s movie another 20 times and not fail to be moved by it,” he said.

Larsen wasn’t able to attend a screening at Sundance, but he did catch the film online a few months later. Since he knows Chung personally, he said he was a little nervous to watch it.

“What if you don’t like it? It’s so hard,” he said. “It’s so much nicer when you feel enthusiasm.”

Provided by A24 Films

Steven Yeun and Yeri Han star in Lee Isaac Chung’s “Minari,” a breakout hit at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival that could win as many as six Oscars on Sunday.

But any worry he felt dissipated fairly early on. He watched “Minari” with fascination, engrossed in the tension as the father’s dream started to grow more at odds with the mother and her own desires.

At Sundance, “Minari” was one of the top films, winning both the U.S. Dramatic prize and the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award, the Deseret News reported. Now, “Minari” and Chung — who is no longer saying goodbye to a film career and has a couple of projects in the works — have a chance to win a few Oscars.

Although Larsen and Hanson don’t typically watch the Oscars, they’re planning to make an exception on Sunday. “Minari” is up against some tough competition in the best picture category, including films like “Nomadland” and Aaron Sorkin’s “Trial of the Chicago 7.” But Hanson doesn’t believe “Minari” and Chung will come up empty-handed.

“If you were going to give an Academy Award to somebody, I can’t think of a nicer human being to give it to than Isaac,” he said. “We’re kind of suffering, I think, from an inability to see each other. This movie is an easy place for somebody to learn to see others, and I think for that reason, it has a real chance.”

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