I just want to say that ‘Minari’ is about a family. 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.
I didn’t grow up breathing cinema. I had to figure it all out in public.
My sister and I thought my grandmother was not very grandmotherly compared to all of the church ladies that we knew. She was making sure we learned all the Korean swear words, just in case we needed them. Now I see what an awesome lady she was.
Many filmmakers start off with an autobiographical film from childhood, and that’s kind of what I was thinking I would do, but other projects would just present themselves naturally in the beginning.
My dad started to watch westerns at dollar cinemas in Seoul and felt like America was a miraculous place. His family had lost a lot of land during the Korean War and the Japanese occupation. That affected him a lot as a kid. He always felt like he needed to come to the U.S. and get land.
I think we just have to be mindful of what that definition of an American dream is. I think we are faced with a lot of definitions of that that are, frankly, unhealthy.
I grew up watching films of predominantly white families speaking in English, and that this represented the American experience.
The single most eye-opening experience for me and what propelled me to become a filmmaker was that I started to see films from other countries.
The films that excite me most tend to be the films that seem like voices that we haven’t heard of before.
I was used to always having a stack of Korean television VHS tapes growing up.
I grew up feeling like the main obstacles that we were trying to overcome had more to do with how we survive together as a family, and less to do with external relationships that we had with the community.
I had my daughter in 2013, we moved to L.A. and there’s just lots of things that were happening that were feeding into the desire to tell a story that’s more personal and to talk about what it’s like to be a father.
I was an art house guy, making little, not-much-happening films.
I’m not much of a visionary guy when it comes to figuring out how to go about my career.
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