The Cinematheque

In Person: Min Sook Lee

“The raw honesty of Toronto filmmaker Min Sook Lee’s deeply affecting documentary leaves you breathless, but it will also leave you in awe of her courage.”

Karen Gordon, Original Cin

“I used to be afraid to remember that day,” says award-winning Korean Canadian director Min Sook Lee. When Lee was 12, her mother Song Ji Lee committed suicide. In her most intimate film yet, Lee, now a mother herself, sets out to confront lingering trauma and family secrets through archival photos and stories shared by family members and friends, revealing her mother to be a lively, complex person—a portrait sometimes at odds with her father’s perspective. At 90, her father is emotionally detached from his wife’s death, and an unreliable narrator as he recounts meeting her while working for the South Korean national intelligence agency in the 1960s. Despite its title, the film affirms that though there may be no words to describe the depth of one’s grief, the uneasy journey to preserve a loved one’s memory is a worthy, even empowering, cause.

In Korean and English with English subtitles

DOC Institute Best Documentary Award
Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival 2025

Post-screening discussion with director Min Sook Lee.

Moderated by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, series director.