South Korea / USA

Lee Isaac Chung is an award-winning, New York-based filmmaker. As an immigrant from South Korea, he grew up in Arkansas and attended Yale University. At Yale, he was exposed to art cinema, when he gave up his plan to go to medical school and pursued filmmaking. His first major film, Munyurangabo, was well received at a premiere at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival (Official Selection - Un Certain Regard). The film is about an intimate friendship between two boys in the aftermath of the Rwandan Genocide. It was an official selection at top film festivals worldwide, including Busan, Toronto, Berlin, Rotterdam, New York, and AFI Fest in Hollywood, where it won the festival's top prize. It was also selected as one of the famous New Directors/New Films series at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, and was nominated for the Gotham Award and an Independent Spirit Award. His 2010 film, Lucky Life, film premiered at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City and has screened at festivals worldwide. His third film, Abigail Harm (2012), based on the Korean folktale "The Woodcutter and the Nymph", was an official selection at the Busan International Film Festival, Torino Film Festival, San Diego Asian Film Festival, CAAMFest, and winner of the Grand Prize and Best Director at Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. He co-directed the 2015 Rwandan documentary I Have Seen My Last Born with Samuel Gray Anderson. Chung also mentors young Rwandan filmmakers through Almond Tree Rwanda, the Rwandan outpost for his US-based production company, Almond Tree Films.

Filmography

Highway (2004)
Sex and Coffee (2005)
Los Coyotes (2005)
Munyurangabo (2007)
Lucky Life (2010)
Abigail Harm (2012)
I Have Seen My Last Born (2015)
Minari (2020)