Actors On Actors: Steven Yeun & Riz Ahmed

In Lee Isaac Chung’s life-affirming Minari, Steven Yeun plays Jacob Yi, a Korean American dad who pursues his goal of financial success by moving his unenthusiastic family to a farm in 1980s Arkansas. There, the family members are strangers in a strange land — which has parallels with Darius Marder’s Sound of Metal, in which Riz Ah­­med’s character, Ruben, an intense heavy metal drummer, has to come to terms with living life as a newly deaf person. Whe­ther Ruben or Jacob can forge new lives for themselves, ones that give them peace and fulfillment, is the central question of both Sound of Metal and Minari.