FILM · 2020 · USA
Minari
19 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (19)
- #001
Steven Yeun's red hat was a gift from his mother when he was 17 years old.
- #002
Youn Yuh-jung is a major star in her native South Korea, and she welcomed the chance to work in the United States, where she is not recognized. She had lived in the US for a time before and drew on that period for her performance.
- #003
It was filmed in and around Tulsa, Oklahoma.
- #004
It is the second Korean-language film to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, after Parasite (2019), which won the award a year earlier.
- #005
Lee Isaac Chung, who knew how special his mother and father were, did not tell them until the editing stage that he was making a film about his childhood experiences with them.
- #006
Minari is also known as water celery. On the WTF podcast, Steven Yeun said it is pronounced "mee-nah-ree," with a slight roll of the "r."
- #007
During the opening credits, on the side of the moving minivan, there is a "Cather Truck Rental" logo referencing the writer Willa Cather, whose work inspired Lee Isaac Chung to write the Minari screenplay.
- #008
Killing or culling male chicks is standard practice because they cannot lay eggs and the breed of chicken used by the meat industry differs from the one used by egg producers. New technology developed at McGill (as of 2016) allows hatcheries to identify the sex of a fertilized egg before it enters the incubator. This means it looks like an ordinary supermarket egg to consumers. And male eggs from hatcheries may actually end up on your plate.
- #009
Lee Isaac Chung received an Oscar nomination for Best Director, and with Nomadland (2020), Chloé Zhao was nominated in the same category, marking the first time two directors of East Asian descent were nominated in that category in the same year.
- #010
Youn Yuh-jung is one of ten actors who have won an Oscar for playing a character who speaks partly or primarily in a language other than English (as of 2023). The others are Sophia Loren, Robert De Niro, Roberto Benigni, Benicio Del Toro, Penélope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Christoph Waltz, Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan. Youn's win was the first achieved in Korean rather than an Indo-European language (French, German, Italian, Spanish, etc.).
- #011
Principal photography began in July in Tulsa and employed more than 170 Oklahoma industry members while using a number of local businesses for production needs such as equipment rental, lodging and catering. Tulsa served as the main production hub for "Minari," which was shot over five weeks in the city and surrounding areas including Sand Springs, Skiatook, Broken Arrow and Rose.
- #012
It is a fact that the region is prone to tornadoes, lying in the area known as Tornado Alley, which has the highest risk and occurrence rate in the US.
- #013
The character Mr. Harlan, played by Darryl Cox, was originally written as Japanese-American.
- #014
Steven Yeun had previously appeared in Burning (2018), based on Haruki Murakami's short story "Barn Burning," about a man (Yeun's character) who says he burns barns. In this film, Yeun's character tries to prevent his own barn from burning.
- #015
It premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.
- #016
Hollywood actor Brad Pitt was one of the film's executive producers.
- #017
Minari was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar in a year when, for the first time in this awards system, the majority of the nominees were Black. The winner, Anthony Hopkins (The Father (2020)), is Welsh; Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal (2019)) is a Muslim Pakistani-Briton; Chadwick Boseman (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020)) is African-American; Gary Oldman (Mank (2020)) is English; and Steven Yeun (this film) is Asian-American.
- #018
Minari is included among Letterboxd's Top 250 Narrative Feature Films.
- #019
Minari features the only Oscar-nominated performances (as of 2024) of both Steven Yeun and Youn Yuh-jung.
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