Free Chol Soo Lee

Name: Free Chol Soo Lee
Director: Eugene Yi, Julie Ha
Released: 2022
Duration: 83 min
Rating: 7.1
Cast: Chol Soo Lee, Sebastian Yoon, Ranko Yamada, K.W. Lee, Jeff Adachi

2022 · 83 MIN · IMDB 7.1 · 279 VOTES · DIR. Eugene Yi, Julie Ha

Overview

On June 3, 1973, a man was murdered in a busy intersection of San Francisco’s Chinatown as part of an ongoing gang war. Chol Soo Lee, a 20-year-old Korean immigrant who had previous run-ins with the law, was arrested and convicted based on flimsy evidence and the eyewitness accounts of white tourists who couldn’t distinguish between Asian features. Sentenced to life in prison, Chol Soo Lee would spend years fighting to survive behind bars before journalist K.W. Lee took an interest in his case. The intrepid reporter’s investigation would galvanize a first-of-its-kind pan-Asian American grassroots movement to fight for Chol Soo Lee’s freedom, ultimately inspiring a new generation of social justice activists.

Dialogue Timeline — 1,390 lines

A SAMPLE ACROSS THE RUNTIME — EVERY LINE IS SEARCHABLE

00:00:07 - Sorry about all the smoke. - It's alright.

00:04:03 Sometimes I'd work as a barker

00:07:53 and dehumanization of such treatment.

00:11:15 as the man he arrested, he said,

00:14:41 Chol Soo Lee killed a member of the Aryan Brotherhood.

00:18:30 Years later, my mother had separated from her husband

00:21:59 I was lucky.

00:25:30 This is definitely a Korean immigrant body

00:29:00 Court hearings, hundreds of people were there.

00:32:23 It's too frightening.

00:35:33 the Chinatown conviction invalid.

00:39:05 UNITE TO FREE CHOL SOO LEE

00:43:02 The judge came down and ruled the death penalty for Chol Soo.

00:47:07 I was worried.

00:50:35 I saw that their eyewitnesses were very fallible,

00:53:36 And so I went into court when they said they had a verdict.

00:56:28 the wrongful imprisonment of these years.

01:00:33 These young girls were coming up asking for autographs.

01:04:18 that's it.

01:07:26 he needed cocaine. He couldn't continue like this,

01:11:41 How have you been living?

01:14:58 Like those are the real heroes.

01:19:03 and he'd written out a speech.

01:25:14 Closed Captioning: Mistral Artist-New York

Cast & Characters

Chol Soo Lee Self (archive footage)

Sebastian Yoon Narrator (voice)

Ranko Yamada Self - Friend; Defense Committee

K.W. Lee Self - Investigative Reporter

Jeff Adachi Self - Activist

David Kakishiba Self - Activist

Jay Kun Yoo Self - Chair, Defense Committee

Grace Kim Self - Vice-chair, Defense Committee

Warren Furutani Self - L.A. Defense Committee

Leonard Weinglass Self - Defense Attorney (archive footage)

Josiah “Tink” Thompson Self - Private Investigator

Gail Whang Self - Bay Area Defense Committee

Jai Lee Wong Self - L.A. Defense Committee

Mike Suzuki Self - Bay Area Defense Committee

Me Yea Lee Self - Mother of Chol Soo Lee (archive footage)

Leonard Tauman Self - Defense Attorney (archive footage)

Tony Serra Self - Defense Attorney

Stuart Hanlon Self - Defense Attorney (archive footage)

Frank Falzon Self - San Francisco Police Dept. (archive footage)

Sandra Gin Self - Reporter (archive footage)

Sung Soo Yoo Self - Defense Committee

Richard Kim Self - Professor, UC Davis

Dialogue Record

Lines indexed1,390

Dialogue density16.7 lines / min

First line00:00:07

Final line01:25:14

Production Record

DirectorEugene Yi, Julie Ha

LanguageEnglish

Revenue$50,083

IMDb votes279

Factoids

Rating source

IMDb rating preserved from the supplied subtitle archive; it may differ from the current IMDb rating.

Local subtitle archive