Lee Joo-Young Wins Rising Star Award At New York Asian Film Festival

The New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF) will present the 2020 Screen International Rising Star Award to South Korean actress Lee Joo-young, whose film Baseball Girl makes its international premiere via the virtual festival. 

The award recognizes Lee’s daring choice of roles and fierce commitment to every performance, whether she appears in indie cinema, where she’s already a star, or in popular TV dramas, such as Itaewon Class.

Lee made her screen debut in the short independent film Encounter in 2012. She spent the next few years acting in multiple independent films before earning critical acclaim for her role in A Quiet Dream (NYAFF 2017 selection/US Premiere) directed by Zhang Lu.

That same year, she appeared alongside Irene, a member of the popular K-pop girl group Red Velvet, in the web drama Game Development Girls, which led to her supporting roles in the TV dramas Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok-joo and Something In The Rain. After garnering praise with her role in Jane (NYAFF 2017 selection/North American Premiere), she was awarded the Actress of the Year Award at the 2018 Busan International Film Festival for her performance in Maggie (NYAFF 2019 selection/North American Premiere), then the Special Short Drama Actress Award at the 2019 KBS Drama Awards for Home Sweet Home.

In 2020 Lee appeared in the JTBC drama Itaewon Class, which ended as the seventh highest rated drama in Korean cable television history and became an international hit on Netflix, where it can still be seen. In Itaewon Class, Lee plays the transgender self-taught chef Ma Hyun-yi, a character whose culinary success and transition are both celebrated by her cafe co-workers.

In writer/director Choi Yun-Tae’s Baseball Girl, Lee plays Joo Soo-in, a talented baseball player, who finds it hard to land a baseball tryout because of the assumption that women cannot compete on a professional level. The film debuted at the 2019 Busan International Film Festival and opened in Korea in June 2020. For her performance, Lee won an Independent Star Award at the Seoul Independent Film Festival.

In both Itaewon Class and Baseball Girl, Lee plays characters who refuse to be defined by how others see them. In Itaewon Class, Lee plays a character who does not feel comfortable in the body she was assigned at birth. In Baseball Girl, Lee’s character defies assumptions about her limitations as a player. 

When Baseball Girl starts, Soo-in is about to graduate high school. She has not been drafted for a professional team, so the adults in her life caution her to make compromises, to plan a more realistic career. Soo-in has no intention of doing anything other than playing ball on a professional level.

A new coach, who is initially dismissive of Soon-in’s stubborn attitude, comes to recognize both her drive and potential. Soo-in pitches until her hands are battered. She runs until her slight body keels over. She persists until her determination eventually earns his respect.

The coach, played by Lee Joon-hyuk, teaches her to work around her physical limitations and pitch in a way that works to her advantage. Baseball Girl is a must-see film for anyone who appreciates an underdog sports success story and may be rousingly inspiring for those faced with a dream that is difficult to achieve.

South Korean cinema figures prominently in this year’s NYAFF lineup, with the international premiere of Forbidden Dream and the SF8 science fiction films series, the North American premieres of Choi Won-sub’s Hitman: Agent Jun, Yoon Danbi’s Moving On and Kim Cho-hee’s Lucky Chan-sil, among others. The virtual edition of the festival will run from Aug. 28 to Sept. 12 on the Smart Cinema USA app. Tickets for this year’s special virtual edition go on sale Aug. 23.

The New York Asian Film Festival is co-presented by the New York Asian Film Foundation and Film at Lincoln Center