Free Chol Soo Lee

Julie Ha and Eugene Yi's 2022 documentary is about Chol Soo Lee, accused of a murder committed in San Francisco in 1973. A Korean immigrant of twenty, he was convicted on the testimony of tourists who saw the incident from a distance and could not tell Asian people apart. At the centre is the movement that formed. After a journalist's articles the Korean community organised and the case became a nationwide campaign; it was among the first instances of different Asian communities acting together. Lee was eventually acquitted, but release did not repair his life. The documentary covers this at length and makes asking what happened to the person who was saved its real subject. Who it's for: those interested in the American legal system and Asian American history. Who it's not for: viewers expecting a story that ends in rescue; the film gives its real weight to what came after.