Quotes from Lee Isaac Chung

I was so excited when 'Parasite' won the Oscar last year, and part of that was the shared Korean heritage and also it was just knowing that Bong Joon Ho made an incredible film and it didn't matter what language they were speaking, what country it was from, audiences all around the world responded to it.

I went to Rwanda with my wife who had been going for the past three summers. She is an art therapist who works with survivors of the genocide. I decided to become a volunteer also, and to teach filmmaking. But thinking about how to approach a class, it made sense to start making a movie there, with the kids.

For us, church was kind of the way that we found our first entry into community in Arkansas. My parents would drop us off at the First Baptist Church of Lincoln so that we would make friends and we would learn English.

I didn't grow up breathing cinema. I had to figure it all out in public.

I know a lot of people in my old town in Arkansas are big Trump supporters, and in a way I try to understand them. I try not to judge them for that.

I have always loved comedies.

There's something about just connecting with people in their specific place and also finding that they're human just like me.

I felt like I was growing up with two different churches, in a sense. And that's always stayed with me - not just the religion of it - but the day-to-day understanding that these beliefs, that faith itself, is something that I need as something to sustain me.

My sister and I thought my grandmother was not very grandmotherly compared to all of the church ladies that we knew. She was making sure we learned all the Korean swear words, just in case we needed them. Now I see what an awesome lady she was.

A lot of times we have these categories that maybe don't fit the reality of human experience and human identity. I'm completely sympathetic to what a lot of people in my community are saying - that often as Asian Americans we're made to feel more foreign than we internally feel ourselves.

I always loved Flannery O'Conner, and how she's not trying to create sympathetic characters.

I thought I would go into philosophy and political science.

I just feel so damn proud for the entire family behind 'Minari.'

I was hitting 40, and I realized I needed to just move on in life and do something practical.

I try not to be someone who's preaching a message with my films or anything like that.

I had to stop taking myself and the craft that seriously. Somehow I saw the bigger context of life. It's just a movie. What I wanted was to entertain and delight and put the audience on a nice ride.

It's hard to say, 'I demand a seat at a table for best picture.'

My dad started to watch westerns at dollar cinemas in Seoul and felt like America was a miraculous place. His family had lost a lot of land during the Korean War and the Japanese occupation. That affected him a lot as a kid. He always felt like he needed to come to the U.S. and get land.

But for me, at one point I was like, 'Why do I want to make films that people want to walk out of?' What if I actually want people to engage and have a good time?

I hope that anyone facing or experiencing discrimination will, first of all, take to heart that this is not their fault, and they are not alone in this. Secondly, I hope they find ways to plug into communities to help prevent negative feelings of discrimination from festering.

It's always about agency - that's the goal, always, to give agency to people. I think that's always got to be the priority.

When I look back now, as an adult, I'm able to see my mom and grandmother in a different way that I didn't understand as a kid.

I don't diminish the idea of being American, but what I embrace is the idea of being human.

A lot of people have had good discussions about what it means to be American, and we need to broaden our definition.