DVD Release: The Early Films of Lee Isaac Chung

DVD Release Date: Nov. 9, 2021
Price: DVD $34.99
Studio: Film Movement


On November 9, Film Movement will issue a trio of early films by the filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung–the son of Korean immigrants who grew up on a small farm in rural Arkansas–in the cleverly titled collection The Early Films of Lee Isaac Chung.

Included in Film Movement’s slipcased DVD collection is Chung’s feature film debut, 2007’s Munyurangabo, an Official Un Certain Regard Selection at Cannes and winner of the Grand Jury Award at AFI Fest. A decade after Munyurangabo, Chung was close to trading in the unpredictable life of an independent filmmaker for a more stable career as a film professor. But he had one last script he wanted to write, and that script famously became Minari, a coming-of-age story inspired by Chung’s own childhood in Arkansas.

Minari drew great acclaim at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, where it won both the grand jury and audience awards, as well as six Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Score and acting nods for Steven Yeun and for Yuh-Jung Youn, who’d go on top capture the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Back to the collection, supplementing Munyurangabo on DVD are an audio commentary by Chung and behind-the-scenes footage.

The other two films in the collection are Chung’s Lucky Life (2010) and Abigail Harm (2012) starring Amanda Plummer.

All three films in the collection are also available individually.

Buy or Rent The Early Films of Lee Isaac Chung
on DVD

About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.