FREE CHOL SOO LEE

USA 2022 - DCP - 83 minutes, in English

Director: Julie Ha, Eugene Yi

Producers: Julie Ha, Sona Jo, Su Kim, Jean Tsien, Eugene Yi

With: Chol Soo Lee

Print Courtesy: MUBI

A story unknown to many, a cause célèbre to others, Chol Soo Lee’s case was seen by the latter—and by this extremely stirring, moving film—as a prime example of racism in the United States. Chol Soo Lee was a Korean man in San Francisco in 1973 who was wrongfully convicted of murder, partly because he was mistaken by white tourists for being Chinese. Lee’s case and the subsequent antiracist movement founded in the wake of the efforts to overturn his conviction seem more relevant than ever now. Yet Lee himself emerges a complex, somewhat humanly contradictory and fully-formed figure in Julie Ha’s and Eugene Yi’s fine documentary. That’s what lingers most: we are amazed at the historical events we are immersed in while watching FREE CHOL SOO LEE. —Ken Eisen

Wednesday, July 13 6:30 P.M. | WOH

Thursday, July 14 9:00 P.M. | RR3