Sundance Film Festival: Steven Yeun on immigrant story Minari, the brilliance of Parasite’s Bong Joon-ho, and his lucky career
- Korean-American actor shed tears watching film with his father, who took their family to the US when Yeun was a child, as his character does in Minari
- Yeun, who starred in Burning and Bong Joon-ho’s Okja, hopes film fans start paying more attention to directors from Asia and ‘understand what they are saying’
Korean-American actor Steven Yeun, known internationally for his portrayal as Glenn Rhee in TV series the Walking Dead, is attracting some of the best reviews of his career for a major hit at the Sundance Film Festival in the American state of Utah.
Minari, an immigrant story shot mostly in English, was written and directed by Lee Isaac Chung (Abigail Harm) and produced by Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company. It is entered at Sundance in the US Dramatic Competition.
Yeun, 36, who brought the project to Plan B, was in tears watching the movie with his father, who emigrated from Seoul to Canada and then the United States when Yeun was a child. “It was probably not the best idea to sit beside him,” the cherubic-faced actor tells the Post in an interview.
US-born Chung, 41, based Minari’s story around his own father, who moved his family to rural 1980s Arkansas. “I had a lot of conversations with Isaac,” recalls Yeun, “and I think we are both personified through the character of David.”
David is played by cute and very talented Californian newcomer Alan S. Kim. The story revolves around the US-born six-year-old having to deal with his maternal grandmother coming to stay from South Korea.
