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Korean cinema is no stranger to Sundance Film Festival. Korean directors have had a history of kicking off the North American festival calendar, including Kogonada ("Columbus", 2017), Lee Isaac Chung (Minari, 2020), and Celine Song (Past Lives, 2024). This year, Stephanie Ahn drew heads with her debut feature, "Bedford Park," which competed in the U.S. Dramatic Competition. Ahn's first feature walked away with big news too, including the Special Jury Award for Debut Feature –U.S. Dramatic Competition and a sale with Sony Pictures Classics.

Past Lives (2024)

We had the chance to speak with director Stephanie Ahn about her latest film in Park City. Similar to Past Lives, "Bedford Park" explores different avenues of the Korean diaspora experience through a drawn-out entanglement. Audrey, or Ah-yoon (Moon Choi, Okja) moves back home to New Jersey to live with her first-generation Korean immigrant parents. When she and her mother get into a car accident, they look for ways to make amends with the owner of the vehicle they totaled. Eli (Son Sok-ku, The Roundup), however, is not interested. Even though Audrey and her mother bear fruit and flowers, Eli does not bother to ingratiate himself. In fact, after being adopted by white parents at the tender age of ten, he has long felt disconnected from the Korean community, etiquette, and norms. After Audrey suffers from another accident at Eli's doorstep, however, she finds herself indebted to him once again.

Minari (2020)

To pay him back in the meantime, Audrey offers to drive Eli around town. The film relies largely on car conversations, making accents in both languages became a particular point of precision. For director Ahn, this required extra supervision. "First and foremost, authenticity was the driving factor," Ahn shared. "Given that Moon Choi and Son Sok-ku are Korean actors who had each lived in the States for several years, we had to find the balance of the accent. They're meant to play Korean Americans who mostly grew up in the United States."

As a result, Ahn hired a dialogue coach to assist with specific pronunciations. For Son Sok-ku, for example, she said, "I wanted to make sure there was some Korean sensibility in his speech. He had gone back to Korea throughout his teenage years to see other relatives, so I thought it was realistic for him to still have that. But he also grew up in the streets of the Bronx and Pennsylvania, so he has a little bit of that street accent that's very Western."

Throughout the production, Ahn encouraged her actors to take over the role and "make it their own." Moon Choi, for example, developed her own mannerisms and way of speech to complement her portrayal of Audrey. "A lot of the character nuances were no longer about me. We developed [Audrey's] her past, her wants and desires separate from mine. They were personal to me, but we also wanted to give [Audrey] a life of her own."

Okja (2017)

Still, Bedford Park was largely based on director Ahn's personal life. "Bedford Park was inspired by a lot of experiences I had as an Asian American growing up in a Korean American home," she confessed. With her two foils, the audience can empathize with feeling both on the inside and outside of Korean culture. "I wanted to make something that made people actually feel the things that I experienced in Korean American families, balancing our conflicts and internal struggles with Western cultural influence. I wanted to see a film that captured that in a way that felt visceral to me."

For Ahn, the key to authenticity is ambiguity. Bedford Park blossoms with its in-betweens: Audrey and Eli oscillate between South Korea and the U.S.; they remain suspended in the grey zone between friendship and romance. "I just let what felt right take over. I let my characters breathe through these tensions and conflicts in a nebulous place of uncertainty. Accepting that is ultimately the goal. It doesn't have to be clearly defined one way or another; but you can embrace both."

"For me, the goal for everyone involved in the film, especially with my actors, was to be truthful of just that moment," she continued. "My department heads and crew were not all Korean American, so they did not have to understand the culture [completely], but truth is universal. You can feel when something feels really authentic."

The Roundup (2022)

On the ground at Sundance, multiple audience members compared Bedford Park to Lee Sung-jin's Beef (2023), a Netflix television series about a road rage incident that leads to another entanglement. Surprisingly, instead of citing other transnational or Asian diaspora cinema as film inspiration, Ahn recollected a wider variety of arthouse influences. "Ingmar Bergman. Stanley Kubrick. Tarkovsky. So many," she laughed. "Lee Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine (2007) was a big influence for me. I am also obsessed with A Separation (2011) by Asghar Farhadi; Blue Valentine (2010) by Derek Cianfrance; Rust and Bone (2012) by Jacques Audiard; Breaking the Waves (1996) by Lars von Trier; and The Insider (1999) by Michael Mann."

Secret Sunshine (2007)

At its core though, the theme of ambiguity – or rather, the avoidance of cultural essentialism – is at the heart of many of Bedford Park. If Past Lives centers "inyeon," or the karmic belief in fate, Bedford Park explores "han," or a profound scar of resentment and sorrow. For Ahn, this stems from the competing longings that come with being a Korean and American at once. "I had very strong passions that I wanted to follow while being deeply rooted in family loyalty. And they seemed contradictory. My story is not about synergy; it's about getting to a place to embrace conflict, contradiction, and tension, and finding that balance."

Regardless, for all of Ahn's descriptions of ambiguity and being in the moment, I felt compelled to ask about the ending. Before we closed the conversation, I asked whether Audrey and Eli would find each other again. Ahn raised her eyebrows in amusement. "Once the film is made, it becomes yours. It's not mine anymore; it's the audience's," she answered. "I have my own version, and everyone else will have their own version, but there is no defined outcome in terms of whether they are together or not." I protested. Ahn smiled. "I think you already know. It's what your imagination tells you."

Written by Grace Han
Edited by kofic