Lee Isaac Chung

Lee Isaac Chung (born October 19, 1978) is an American filmmaker. His debut feature Munyurangabo (2007) was an official selection at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and the first narrative feature film in the Kinyarwanda language. Chung gained fame for directing the semi-autobiographical film Minari (2020), for which he received numerous major awards and nominations, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay at the 93rd Academy Awards. In 2023, he directed an episode in the third season of the Star Wars series The Mandalorian. Early life and education Chung was born on October 19, 1978, in Denver, to a family from South Korea. His family lived briefly in Atlanta before moving to a small farm in rural Lincoln, Arkansas. He attended Lincoln High School. He is an alumnus of the U.S. Senate Youth Program. He attended Yale University to study biology. At Yale, with exposure to world cinema in his senior year, he dropped his plans for medical school to pursue film-making. He later pursued graduate studies in film-making at the University of Utah.