Golden Globes Roasted for Shutting ‘Minari’ Out of Best Picture Race: ‘Sad,’ ‘Racist,’ ‘Complete Bulls–‘

“The film equivalent of being told to go back to your country when that country is actually America,” said Daniel Dae Kim

Minari
"Minari" / A24

Nominations for the 2021 Golden Globes won’t be announced until February, but the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) is already under fire over rules that exclude Lee Isaac Chung’s “Minari” from the Best Picture race.

As first reported by Variety, the A24 drama will be relegated to the Best Foreign Language Film category because it is primarily in Korean. A similar situation happened last year with Lulu Wang’s “The Farewell,” which was ineligible to compete in the Best Picture category at the Globes because of its mostly Mandarin dialogue.

The HFPA did not immediately return TheWrap’s request for comment. The Golden Globe eligibility rule states that any film with at least 50% of non-English dialogue goes into the Foreign Language category. Because of this longstanding rule, “Minari” distributor A24 had no choice but to enter the film in the Best Foreign Language Film category in November.

The initial report prompted a wave of outrage from film critics and from celebrities like Wang, Daniel Dae Kim and “Shang-Chi” star Simu Liu.

“Just for the record, ‘Minari’ is an American movie written and directed by an American filmmaker set in America with an American lead actor and produced by an American production company,” Liu pointed out on Twitter.

Kim tweeted “the film equivalent of being told to go back to your country when that country is actually America.”

https://twitter.com/danieldaekim/status/1341685158131331073

“I have not seen a more American film than ‘Minari’ this year,” Wang, director of “The Farewell,” said. “It’s a story about an immigrant family, in America, pursuing the American dream. We really need to change these antiquated rules that characterizes American as only English-speaking.”

https://twitter.com/thumbelulu/status/1341606647572045824

In “Minari,” Steven Yeun (“The Walking Dead”) plays Jacob, the father of a group of Korean-American immigrants who find a new start in rural Arkansas in the 1980s. Chung wrote his period drama based on his own childhood growing up in the Midwest.

“Minari” won Sundance’s top two prizes — the narrative feature jury prize and the audience award — when it premiered at the festival earlier this year.

Below, see more reactions to Wednesday’s “Minari” news.

https://twitter.com/AlyseWhitney/status/1341766173004681218

Umberto Gonzalez

Umberto has been covering the fanboy beat & breaking scoops for 20 years with numerous Hollywood trade, newspaper, & magazine mentions to his credit. Umberto has been profiled in such publications as The Washington Post, Variety and Grantland.

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