Minari Trivia | 45 facts about the Oscar awarded movie

Following the success of “Parasites”, “Minari” is the Oscar awarded movie which proved that South Korean creators certainly belong to the cinematic future.

Let’s find out more about it!

1. Minari is a 2020 American drama film.
2. It is written and directed by Lee Isaac Chung.
3. It stars Steven Yeun, Han Ye-ri, Alan Kim, Noel Kate Cho, Youn Yuh-jung, and Will Patton.
4. It’s a semi-autobiographical take on Chung’s upbringing.
5. The plot follows a family of South Korean immigrants who try to make it in the rural United States during the 1980s.
6. Minari in Korean: means ”water celery”.
7. Minari had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 26, 2020.
8. It won both the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award.
9. It began a one-week virtual release on December 11, 2020.
10. Then it was released theatrically and via virtual cinema on February 12, 2021, by A24.
11. The film received critical acclaim, with many declaring it one of the best films of 2020.
12. It earned six nominations at the 93rd Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Score, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor (Yeun), and Best Supporting Actress (Youn).
13. It totally won 5 out 6 Oscars.
14. Youn won for her performance, making her the first South Korean to win an Academy Award for acting.
15. It also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
16. It was nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.
17. Last but not least it earned six nominations at the 74th British Academy Film Awards, including Best Film Not in the English Language.
18. Jung had initially hoped to make an adaptation of My Antonia by Willa Cather but found out that Cather did not wish for people to make film adaptations of her works. Chung felt inspiration to make a film about his own rural upbringing.
19. Chung went to a library and wrote down some personal memories that he used as a basis for the story.
20. Chung wrote the screenplay for Minari in 2018 shortly before taking on an instructor position at the Asia Campus of the University of Utah in Incheon.
21. Chung drew from his own childhood growing up on a farm in Arkansas.
22. He cited Cather and Fyodor Dostoevsky as inspirations during the writing process, recalling the former’s quote “that her life really began when she stopped admiring and started remembering” as a motivation to draw on his own experiences.
23. Chung used English as his medium for writing the script, and the lines spoken in Korean were translated into Korean.
24. These parts were translated into colloquial Korean by translator Hong Yeo-ul, talking to director and actors.
25. In early 2019, Christina Oh and Plan B Entertainment signed on as producers on the film. Oh later brought on A24 to distribute the film.
26. In July 2019, it was announced Steven Yeun, Han Ye-ri, Youn Yuh-jung, Will Patton and Scott Haze had joined the cast of the film.
27. Han Ye-ri initially felt she could not take the role as Monica Yi due to her needing to film Nokdu Flower and had suggested Chun Woo-hee as an alternate as she felt it was important a Korean-born woman portrayed Monica.
28. Han Ye-ri stated that Monica, of the principal characters, “seemed to be the most Korean” due to the character’s difficulties with living in the United States, and she felt it was important an actress born in Korea, natively speaking Korean, take the role
29. Principal photography began in July 2019 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
30. Filming lasted 25 days.
31. All of the scenes involving the creek were filmed in a single day.
32. In order to make a deadline for Sundance, editor Harry Yoon edited the film as production took place.
33. During filming Han and Youn Yuh-jung lived in the same Airbnb.
34. As Youn Yuh-jung was unknown in the United States, unlike in South Korea where she was a known celebrity and was given a lot of deference, she felt she needed to show her acting skills with a new audience.
35. Youn Yuh-jung previously lived in the United States and used that experience in her performance. Lee Isaac Chung told her not to play Soon-ja in the way Chung’s grandmother was, a move welcomed by Youn Yuh-jung.
36. Chung also took Youn’s suggestions, including one where her character takes money from a church offering, even though Chung’s religious background gave him some hesitation about including that idea.
37. According to Youn, Chung intended for Soon-ja to be alive at the end of the story.
38. Steven Yeun’s red hat was a gift from his mother when he was 17.
39. With this film, Steven Yeun becomes the first Asian-American and first person of East Asian descent to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
40. This is the second Korean speaking film to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, following Parasites(2019) which also won the award one year before.
41. The card game played by the grandmother and the children is called Go-Stop, a well-known and fairly popular card game in Korea.
42. This film is in the Official Top 250 Narrative Feature Films on Letterboxd.
43. Knowing how private his parents are, Lee Isaac Chung didn’t tell them he was making a film about his childhood experiences until he was at the editing stage.
44. Hollywood actor Brad Pitt was one of the executive producers of the film.
45. Steven Yeun previously starred in the 2018 movie Burning based on the Haruki Murakami short story, “Barn Burning” about a man (Yeun’s character) who says that he burns barns. In Minari, Yeun’s character tries to stop a barn from burning.