Julie Ha’s storytelling career spans more than two decades, with a specialized focus on Asian American stories. She worked as an editor for 10 years at KoreAm Journal, a national Korean American magazine, and served as its editor-in-chief from 2011 to 2014, during which time she led award-winning coverage of the 20-year anniversary of the Los Angeles riots. Ha has written for The Hartford Courant in Connecticut, the Rafu Shimpo, a Los Angeles-based Japanese American newspaper, and The Los Angeles Times. Her feature stories have earned her awards from New American Media and the Society of Professional Journalists. In 2018 the Korea Economic Institute of America honored her for her contributions to journalism. “Free Chol Soo Lee” is her first documentary film project. She co-directed the film with Eugene Yi.

“Free Chol Soo Lee” is screening at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, which is running online from January 20-30. More information can be found on the fest’s website.

W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.

JH: The film tells the story of a Korean immigrant who was wrongly convicted of a Chinatown gang murder in San Francisco in the 1970s. After a journalist comes across the case, his series of stories help launch a first-of-its-kind pan-Asian American movement to free Chol Soo Lee. And remarkably, they succeed, but even after his release from prison, Chol Soo Lee would find that he wasn’t truly free.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

JH: I’ve actually known about the story since I was 18 years old, when I first met K.W. Lee, the journalist whose stories helped launch the Free Chol Soo Lee movement, and who would become my longtime mentor. But I didn’t really think about making a film about it until 30 years later, after talking with my directing partner Eugene Yi, who planted the idea of making a film together because we had worked together so well in the past as journalists. And I told him about this heavy feeling I had after attending the funeral of Chol Soo Lee a year earlier.

The mourners, who were mostly the activists who had come to Chol Soo’s aid decades earlier, were expressing a deep regret that they hadn’t done enough for him — even though they had dedicated years of their lives trying to free him from death row. K.W. Lee was also there and lamented how the story of Chol Soo Lee had been forgotten.

This overwhelming sense of heaviness from that funeral stayed with me for a long time after. Eugene and I knew we had to explore what was behind that heaviness. This story felt like it was beckoning us to tell it.

W&H: What do you want people to think about after they watch the film?

JH: This film, this story, has so much to teach, inspire, and challenge us with as we reflect on this man’s life, which was full of so much suffering and yet also was touched by some of the most compassionate, justice-seeking humans on the planet. Through this story, we see just how hard it is to undo the lasting damage of racism and incarceration on a person’s life, as well as the scars that come from a lack of unconditional love. Despite all the forces that worked against him, Chol Soo Lee still kept trying to pick himself back up and go on, until he just couldn’t any longer.

Though in many ways his life was quite tragic, I think how it all “ends” is really up to those of us who are still living. One of the legacies of the Free Chol Soo Lee movement is that many of those who rallied for the cause went on to careers aimed at the public good, as public defenders, youth advocates, and community leaders. And so, now, after learning about this history, how will new generations respond? Will we allow it to change us, move us, inspire us to be more compassionate, and to do our part in creating a more just society?

W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?

JH: One major challenge in making this film was that our main character was deceased and we never had a chance to interview him ourselves, yet we wanted to center Chol Soo Lee’s voice and allow him to tell his own story. To do that, we realized that we had to lean into the words he left behind, including his memoirs.

The next challenge was how to make those words come alive and feel authentically inhabited. And that’s when our producer Su Kim told us about Sebastian Yoon, who does the voiceover in our film. She had seen Sebastian speak at an event for the documentary series “College Behind Bars,” and was surprised to see a Korean American on the panel. Sebastian had participated in the Bard Prison Initiative, which gives incarcerated men and women the opportunity to attend college classes and earn their degrees. After hearing him speak, Su was so moved and felt he could be the voice of Chol Soo Lee.

And when we reached out to him, he was immediately very receptive. Sebastian not only gives the Chol Soo Lee voice in our film an authenticity and genuine emotion, but he also worked with us on the script to help us flesh out Chol Soo’s prison experience.

W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.

JH: We were fortunate to have ITVS come onboard as our co-production partner in 2019. Because of this public TV partnership, we knew our film could have a wide reach, including being accessible to those who are incarcerated.

If you look at our complete list of funders, it’s a multitude of sources, both large and small. We did a lot of grant writing over the life of the film. We were very lucky to get the early support of California Humanities and the Center for Asian American Media. Later, we also got support from the Korean Film Council and Ford Foundation, among others.

I want to mention that we appreciate the smaller grants, too, such as from the Asian Women Giving Circle and UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center, because they came during crucial times and allowed us to keep pushing ahead. This kind of community-based support was personally very important to us, given the subject of our film about a grassroots community movement.

W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

JH: I’m a print journalist by training, and feel like I stumbled into filmmaking because, 1) I had a friend, my directing partner Eugene, who wanted us to work on a film project together about an Asian American subject, and 2) I couldn’t get the story of Chol Soo Lee out of my mind.

I had this firm conviction that we had to make this film. This story felt like it needed a release. While I’m new to filmmaking, I have long identified as a storyteller and believe the stories we tell can change the world and help us feel more connected to each other. We need to be reminded of that common humanity now more than ever.

W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?

JH: I’ll focus on the best advice: While participating in the 2019 Camden film retreat, filmmaker Stephen Maing, who was a mentor, said something about how there could be great value in working on your film for several years. I can’t remember the number he suggested, but I do recall thinking that all the years Eugene and I had put in by that point counted for something!

Stephen said that by taking that extra time with your film and your story, this could allow you the time to grow the skills that you needed to tell the story you wanted to tell. As a filmmaker with no previous film experience, I think I especially gravitated toward that advice because I had such a big learning curve and there were so many new skills I wanted to develop to better serve this story.

W&H: What advice do you have for other women directors?

JH: First, be your story’s strongest, most passionate advocate. Second, surround yourself with a team that feels just as passionately as you do about the story. Eugene and I have been pretty humbled by the dedication of our team, including producers, editors,and  the archival and post teams, who worked so hard to make sure we could make the best film possible.

As directors, Eugene and I were committed to pushing ourselves in service to this incredible story, but witnessing our producers Su Kim, Jean Tsien — also one of our film’s editors — and Sona Jo also be inspired by this story and literally working around the clock, so we could do justice to it, really touched me. This collective effort is all the more beautiful because our film’s story is about collective action. As one of the activists said, it was a chorus, not a solo, behind the Free Chol Soo Lee movement. We could say the same about our film.

W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.

JH: I don’t really like to talk about films in the context of “favorites,” but one film I loved recently is “First Cow” by Kelly Reichardt. It was recommended by one of our film’s editors, Aldo Velasco. It was the first film by Reichardt that I had ever seen, and I was really blown away that I could feel that much suspense for a film with a plot centered on stealing cow’s milk! I was moved by all the subtle, beautiful textures of the friendship between main characters, Cookie and King Lu, and I believed every moment of it. Reichardt does ask you to be patient as a viewer, but if you’re open and hang in there, she will draw you in and the payoff is amazing.

W&H: How are you adjusting to life during the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you keeping creative, and if so, how?

JH: I think it’s been so hard for so many of us. None of us have escaped unscathed by this pandemic. Eugene and I lost a dear friend to COVID last year. This friend was also a Korean American storyteller. His name was Jimmy Lee. He actually makes a “cameo” in our film, and it’s like our secret tribute. I have some past personal experience with being forced to adjust to a new normal, and what I learned is that nothing is promised for tomorrow, value today, and to take life one day at a time.

W&H: The film industry has a long history of underrepresenting people of color onscreen and behind the scenes and reinforcing — and creating — negative stereotypes. What actions do you think need to be taken to make it more inclusive?

JH: There’s an interesting story related to our film that speaks to this problem. Hollywood made the film “True Believer” in 1989, and it was loosely based on the Chol Soo Lee case. But of course, they did the usual whitewashing. The stars and heroes of the film were the white defense lawyers, played by James Wood and Robert Downey, Jr. There was no hard-charging Korean American journalist nor a band of Asian American activists standing up to the criminal justice system.

Hollywood wouldn’t allow them to occupy such roles. But our film does. Asian Americans get to be seen and heard in their full human context in our film. And that’s why Eugene and I often say that our film has the potential to change how American society at large sees Asian Americans, but also how we see ourselves. Storytellers from underrepresented communities need to get the opportunities to have our projects greenlit, funded, and distributed. Filmmaker Grace Lee has been advocating very passionately for equity and inclusion in the documentary film space on her podcast, “Viewers Like Us.” We need to understand that equity and inclusion actually benefits everyone.

Speaking more generally about inclusion in media since I come from a journalism background, I also believe that, while we demand changes within those largely mainstream institutions, we, members of underrepresented communities, should also be working simultaneously to create our own alternative spaces and opportunities to tell our stories, on our own terms. And it’s important for those who believe in the latter to support those efforts, including financially. We need to grow inclusive storytelling opportunities on all fronts.