Min Sook Lee

Lee is a self-taught documentary filmmaker who has directed eight feature documentaries, often focusing on labour, migration, and social justice issues.[6][7]

Early in her career, Lee was news director at community radio station CKLN-FM from 1996 to 1998, and a news reporter at television station Toronto 1 from 2004 to 2005.[8]

Lee's first feature film El Contrato (2003) showed migrant farm workers from Central Mexico facing harsh working conditions in Leamington, Ontario. In response, Leamington farmers issued a SLAPP suit which delayed the film's release by a year.[9] Lee was awarded the Cesar E. Chavez Black Eagle Award for the film.[10]

Lee's 2005 film Hogtown: The Politics of Policing followed a dysfunctional City Hall struggle over the Toronto Police Service's budget during a wave of violent gun crimes and police corruption scandals.[11] The film won the Best Feature-length Canadian Documentary award at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.[12]

Lee also directed Tiger Spirit (2008), telling the story of Korean families divided by the Korean War and the border between North Korea and South Korea; My Toxic Baby (2009), about toxins in baby products; The Real MASH (2010), which tells the story of the real people who inspired the movie and television series, M*A*S*H; Badge of Pride (2010) about LGBT police officers; and The Real Inglorious Bastards (2012), about Frederick Mayer and his company of European Jewish refugees. Lee was co-creator of the television sitcom She's the Mayor, which aired on VisionTV.[13][14] Tiger Spirit was awarded the Donald Brittain Award for Best Social/Political Documentary at the 2009 Gemini Awards. Her film, The Real Inglorious Bastards, won the 2014 Canadian Screen Award for Best History or Biography Documentary Program or Series.[15]

In 2016, Lee revisited the theme of migrant workers in Canada in her film Migrant Dreams, which examined the plight of a group of mostly Indonesian migrant workers entering Canada through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program.[16][10] She was awarded the Canadian Hillman Prize which honours journalists whose work identifies important social and economic issues in Canada[1] and the Canadian Association of Journalists Award for Labour Reporting.[3]

In 2012, the Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts named the Min Sook Lee Labour Arts Award in Lee's honour for her contribution to the cause of migrant workers,[15] citing her work to "engage non-arts audiences, and that challenges Eurocentric notions of art".[17][18]

Lee is an associate professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design, where her teaching and research focus on the relationship between art and social change.[1] She previously taught documentary filmmaking at Ryerson University's School of Image Arts MFA program.[15][19]

As of September 2019, Lee is the New Democratic Party candidate in Toronto-Danforth for the upcoming 2019 federal election.[5][3] In her campaign, she has committed to bring in a 1% super-wealth tax on households with a net wealth of more than $20 million. The Parliamentary Budget Office has estimated that this measure could bring in $70 billion in new revenue.[20] On election night, Lee finished in 2nd with 33.2% of the vote to incumbent Liberal MP Julie Dabrusin.[21]