Inside our photo shoot with Alan Kim, ‘Minari’ actor and 2021 awards season breakout star

Alan Kim wears a cowboy outfit to a “Minari” photo shoot at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

Feb. 12, 2021 8 AM PT

Alan Kim stars in the movie “Minari,” which chronicles a Korean family’s move to Arkansas in the 1980s to start a farm.

When the film premiered a year ago at the Sundance Film Festival, the young actor delighted crowds by strolling around in a cowboy outfit.

“Minari” is now nominated for a Golden Globe in the foreign-language picture category and a Screen Actors Guild Award in the motion picture cast category. Additionally, cast members Steven Yeun and Yuh-Jung Youn are SAG-nominated for their respective lead and supporting performances.

Here’s a look at our shoot with Kim at the Sundance festival — to which he wore, of course, his cowboy outfit.

A cowboy costumed Alan Kim of “Minari” tips his hat.

Alan Kim, then 8, in The Times' photo studio at Sundance, raising a hand as if to make a point.

Alan Kim, in a cowboy costume, stands sideways, projecting some movie-western realness.

Alan Kim, in a cowboy costume, places his cards, or his hands, at least, on a table, western style.

Noel Cho, Yeri Han, Alan Kim, Steven Yeun and Youn Yuh-Jung of “Minari."

Movies Sundance Film Festival

Jay L. Clendenin

Jay L. Clendenin joined the Los Angeles Times as a staff photographer in October 2007. Clendenin has focused his attention in Los Angeles on portraiture, but he has nearly 20 years of experience in photojournalism. A graduate of San Jose State University, with a degree in journalism, Clendenin started his first newspaper job at the Hartford (Conn.) Courant. After four years, he went on to pursue work as a freelancer in New York City and eventually in Washington, D.C. He spent nearly five years in the nation’s capital, documenting politics, taking portraits and chasing human-interest stories, all while maintaining a presence in the White House press pool, working primarily for the news magazines Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report. A native of California who grew up in the San Fernando Valley, Clendenin greeted the opportunity to move to the warm beaches of the South Bay with open arms.