Minari (12)
Directed by Lee Isaac Chung 
★★★★★

DESERVEDLY nominated for six Academy Awards, you can’t help but be swept away by this exquisitely tender and heartfelt story of a Korean-US family in pursuit of the American Dream in 1980s Arkansas. 

Though totally fictional, writer-director Lee Isaac Chung was inspired by his own family and provides a fresh new take on the immigrant tale. It is a touching love letter to his own parents and their tenacity to forge a new life in the US and to provide their children with a more promising future.

The film, the produced by Brad Pitt and named after a peppery Korean herb, follows the pressures that a Korean family of four face as they move from California to a small farm in rural Arkansas and how their lives are upended with the arrival of the maternal grandmother (played superbly by Yuh-Jung Youn). 

She is a sly, foul-mouthed, gambling but loving woman whose adorable but cheeky young grandson David (phenomenal newcomer Alan S Kim), takes an instant dislike to her.

The film captures the growing tensions and heated arguments between David’s parents (a fantastic Steven Yeun and Yeri Han) as their hopes and dreams for the future shatter and digress.

It is a beautiful, slow-burning drama about immigrant life and trying to fit in which, as the daughter of immigrants myself, I can totally relate to.

Maria Duarte