A Story Four Decades in the Making

"There Are No Words" premiered at TIFF in 2025, winning an Honorable Mention for Best Canadian Feature Film Award. The "personal essay" explores Lee's mother's suicide forty years ago in Toronto when she was just 12, and the void that followed . Now 55, Lee wanted to try to understand what happens when trauma, racism, and patriarchal violence collide with the dreams of a working-class immigrant family in Canada.

For Lee, a filmmaker and political activist for over three decades, this deeply personal project reflects her commitment to giving voice to marginalized communities. Her journey from a damaged young person to becoming one of Canada's most important documentary filmmakers offers validation and hope for Indigenous, people of colour and immigrant individuals and families navigating trauma and systemic barriers in western countries like Canada.

The Hollowness of Silence

Immigrant families don't talk about mental health and suicide. "We didn't talk about it. There were no shared stories," Lee says of the years following her mother's death.

"My mother became locked into this block of really trapped grief that nobody could go near or understand. Living a whole life where you don't really understand what happened can actually make your life feel like it's been excavated from the inside out, like there's this hollowness."

Racism Outside, Violence Inside

Lee remembers Toronto after her family immigrated in 1973:

"There was a lot of very aggressive, assertive racism on the streets, in the classrooms, and total erasure of Asians in media, complete absence, and we were the butt of jokes."

She describes one incident in downtown, Toronto at Spadina and Bloor where white university students threw tomatoes at her and her sisters. To cope and survive meant "disappearing my ethnicity and identifying as white passing as possible."

At home, her father, who was trained by Korea's Central Intelligence Corporation as a spy, created what Lee describes as a "violent and abusive patriarchal household."

"I grew up in a very violent family. When you start layering in this experience of growing up in my family with a patriarch who was violent, who was abusive, who was trained and promoted and celebrated for controlling the truth or narratives, then my mother, who died when I was 12, became or was resting on the shelf as a frozen icon that I couldn't come near."

Speaking Through Translators: Reclaiming a Lost Language

Lee's relationship with her father, who is almost ninety, is complicated. They are the only family left in Toronto. When approaching him for the film, she treated him as an "unreliable narrator" and referred to him as a fabulist. After learning he would be interviewed, he asks in the film: "Can I lie a little?"

Because Lee had lost much of her Korean language in Canada, she brought in translators in order to have sensitive conversations with her father and others in Korean about her mother's trauma and their family history. The loss of language was one reason for the film's title. The other reason was how trauma can leave you wordless, and unable to articulate your story in your native language.

Finding Your Career Path Through Chaos

In the 90s in Toronto, Lee was lost in her twenties and had no plan. She rejected her father's pressure to become a doctor or lawyer.

"I had a very damaged childhood and a lot of insecurities. I grew up in a society where you're constantly denigrated and you're seen as someone who has less value and [is] not important. I dropped out of university a few times. I never graduated. I ended up working in bars for a while. I made a lot of dangerous decisions."

Through her sisters, Lee learned about political activism and social justice issues. She organized with Youth Against Apartheid and the Black Women's Collective in Toronto, where she met activists and artists like Faith Nolan, Dionne Brand, and Grace Channer. They were strong women of color who became powerful role models. She worked at CKLN radio and the Mayworks Festival of Labour, learning how arts, politics, and marginalized voices converged and how storytelling was an act of resistance.

At age thirty, Lee found her career path and lifeline in the arts:

"I don't think I would have made it if I didn't work in the arts. I was making a lot of dangerous decisions as a young person. I understand that being able to tell our stories or work in the arts is not interior decorating. It's not fluffy. It's actually food for our soul. And it's a lifeline for us individually, for us communally and of course, as a society."

Holding the Camera, Holding the Distance

"There Are No Words" required Lee to navigate dual roles as director and subject. When asked how she managed learning "life-altering pieces of information so close to your heart" while filming, Lee credits her team and what she calls "screen life."

"You have to have a crew that you love and trust," she explains. This trust allowed her to process personal revelations alongside her lived experience. She acknowledges the emotional toll:

"There's so much stuff I learned about my mother, about the day she died, about how my family responded to my mother's death. I'm very grateful I was able to make this film because I now have access to that information I never had before."

Advice for Creators: Stay Close to What Feeds You

For young BIPOC filmmakers balancing artistic vision and institutional expectations, Lee offers guidance:

"Always go to the story that feeds you politically, creatively, and emotionally. Remember why you got into this in the first place. You can take on certain projects that pay the bills, but don't stray too far from home."

When her documentary work wasn't getting funded and offered projects didn't pay bills, Lee returned to school in her thirties, earned multiple degrees and began teaching at OCAD. This stability gave her freedom to pursue meaningful projects.

She encourages creators to "make work that resonates with your identity and struggles" instead of chasing mainstream validation. Equally important is building a survival network to share resources and "find others like yourself who are going to be emotional, political and creative sources of support". While she didn't do this herself, Lee urges filmmakers to intentionally seek out auteur-driven and independent films that showcase marginalized voices and take risks rather than defaulting to the mainstream.

What's Next: Grassroots Conversations

Lee plans grassroots screenings doing conversational talks and Q&As for "There Are No Words,". She wants to create intentional spaces for women, immigrant families, and survivors of intimate partner violence. She wants people to see their experiences reflected on screen, recognize their struggles, and feel less alone.