‘Minari’ Producer & Busan Jury Member Christina Oh Talks Building Bridges Between U.S. And Korean Film Industries – Busan
deadline.comIn addition to her duties serving on the jury of Busan’s New Currents competition, U.S.-based producer Christina Oh will be meeting a group of Korean filmmakers at the festival to talk about upcoming film projects and attempt to build more bridges between the film industries of Korea and the U.S.
Speaking at the Busan New Currents jury press conference, Oh said she feels that opportunities are growing for filmmakers from Korea and other diaspora communities to make films in North America. “With the success of films like Parasite, Minari and Past Lives there’s an interesting trend towards being more inclusive of films from, not just Korea, but other countries,” said Oh, a Korean-American producer who has credits including Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari and Bong Joon Ho’s Okja.
While Minari was successful at the U.S. box office and won a best supporting actress Oscar for Youn Yuh-jung, Oh said it was actually Korea that was the highest grossing box office territory for the film. “Even though it’s an American film, albeit one with Korean as its primary language, it performed really well in Korea.
So for me it was a realisation that you can make these sorts of bridge-building films.” She added that Minari worked because the filmmakers didn’t intentionally set out to make a film that would bridge a gap. “We made it because me, Lee [Isaac Chung] and Steven [Yeun, star of the film] felt this push and pull of being American and also Korean, but not quite Korean enough, and not quite American enough.
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