Based on the best-selling, highly acclaimed Christian classic novel by John Bunyan, the film is about a man who almost drowns and dreams he goes a literal hell and wakes up a changed man for Christ.
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A picture of the now-Colorado-Springs-based Chung family not long after their grandmother arrived in Arkansas to live with them. The Oscar-nominated movie “Minari” is inspired by their experiences. (Provided by Leisle Chung)
You wouldn’t know it from watching “Minari,” the award-laden film that could walk away with its biggest prize yet at the 93rd Academy Awards on April 25, but the Korean-American family that inspired it lives in Colorado Springs.
That’s because “Minari,” directed by Denver native Lee Isaac Chung, picks up before the film’s Yi family (based on Chung’s own) made it back to Colorado. Instead, it focuses on events inspired by Chung’s rural upbringing, tracing the story of his youth along with his parents, older sister and grandmother as they eked out a living and adjusted to small-town life on an unforgiving patch of Arkansas farmland.