Sentenced to life for a 1973 San Francisco murder, Korean immigrant Chol Soo Lee was set free after a pan-Asian solidarity movement, which included Korean, Japanese, and Chinese Americans, helped to overturn his conviction. After 10 years of fighting for his life inside California state prisons, Lee found himself in a new fight to rise to the expectations of the people who believed in him. On his journey from an inspiring icon to a swingshift janitor struggling with drug addiction, Chol Soo Lee personifies the ravages of America’s prison industrial complex. Director Julie Ha’s storytelling career spans more than two decades in ethnic and mainstream media, with a specialized focus on Asian American stories. Free Chol Soo Lee is her first documentary film. She was former editor-in-chief of KoreAm Journal, a national Korean American magazine. Eugene Yi is a filmmaker, editor, and writer from Los Angeles. He was a contributing editor for KoreAm Journal