“Minari” was a big hit at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival in January before the world imploded, winning both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award. It’s being distributed by A24, and though it doesn’t have a release date as of this writing, the studio confirmed that it will open before the Oscars’ COVID-extended eligibility deadline of February 28, 2021. Does it look like a potential winner to you? Watch the new trailer above.
The film stars former “Walking Dead” actor Steven Yeun as a husband and father who moves his Korean-American family to Arkansas to work on a farm in the 1980s. So on paper, at least, it’s reminiscent of other culture-clash family dramas that have been nominated for Oscars like “In America” (2003) about an Irish immigrant clan in New York City and “A Better Life” (2011) about an undocumented Mexican gardener raising his son in Los Angeles. And A24 has had a strong track record in recent years, winning Best Picture for “Moonlight” (2016) and earning a Best Picture nom for “Lady Bird” (2017), among other plaudits.
Since “The Walking Dead,” Yeun has been making a name for himself on the big screen. He won Best Supporting Actor from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics for his role as a mysterious and potentially sinister man in Lee Chang-dong‘s “Burning” (2018). But even though “Parasite” made Oscar history for Korean cinema by winning Best Picture this year, no Korean actor has yet been nominated by the academy.
At this early stage of the Oscar race, though, a couple of the Expert journalists we’ve polled think Yeun will indeed be nominated for Best Actor: Matthew Jacobs (Huffington Post) and Kevin Polowy (Yahoo). And four Experts say Youn Yhu-jung will be nominated for Best Supporting Actress as the grandmother of the family: Jacobs and Polowy as well as Perri Nemiroff (Collider) and Anne Thompson (Indi eWire). Do you agree that the film will achieve a historic breakthrough?
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