The screening for Free Chol Soo Lee will be shown at TIFF Bell Lightbox 3.
USA202286 minutesEnglishCanadian PremiereDocumentary, Women Filmmakers
San Francisco, 1973. Chol Soo Lee, a young Korean American man, is charged and hastily convicted of murder in Chinatown. Only Lee wasn’t anywhere near the shooting. Marooned in prison, Lee’s case gains notoriety after journalist K.W. Lee’s investigative exposé, which inspires a new generation of Asian American activists to fight for Chol Soo Lee’s release in 1983.
But freedom is elusive in Julie Ha and Eugene Yi’s moving documentary, which covers the rise of a movement and the fall of a man too battered by prison to meet the expectations of him. Expertly layered with extensive archival footage of Lee and contemporary interviews with leaders of the freedom movement, Free Chol Soo Lee is at times a justice-system drama, and a character study—and always empathetic. And it resists the typical salaciousness of the “true crime” genre to show the true human impact, between despair and salvation, on a man yearning to be free.
- Aram Siu Wai Collier
OFFICIAL SELECTION
Sundance Film Festival, 2022
Busan International Film Festival, 2022
Julie Ha and Eugene Yi
Julie Ha’s storytelling career spans more than two decades, in both ethnic and mainstream media, with a specialized focus on Asian American stories. Free Chol Soo Lee marks her first documentary-film project.
Eugene Yi is a filmmaker, editor, and journalist. His film-editing work has premiered at the Berlinale, Sundance, Tribeca, and others.
11 Nov, 2022 6:15 pm
The screening for Free Chol Soo Lee will be shown at TIFF Bell Lightbox 3.
Rated PG
Content Warning: Violence, sexual violence, trauma
Join us for a Q&A immediately after the theatrical presentation with producer Su Kim.
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Founded in Toronto in 1997, Reel Asian is Canada’s largest pan-Asian film festival and a year-round cultural organization dedicated to championing Asian and Asian diasporic artists and storytellers. What began as a grassroots film festival has grown into a national platform supporting filmmakers and audiences through screenings, education, industry initiatives, artist development, and community programming presented across Toronto, the GTA, and online across Canada.
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