Ten years is a long time to live with a movie that may never get made. For Stephanie Ahn, that meant years of writing and rewriting “Bedford Park,” trying to find financing and eventually making a short film in the hope that someone might see what she saw in the feature. By the time the film arrived at TIFF this year, Ahn had already watched it premiere at Sundance, win the Special Jury Award for Debut Feature and get picked up by Sony Pictures Classics for worldwide distribution.
The wait suits a movie about two people who’ve spent a good portion of their lives stuck. Audrey (Moon Choi) is a 36-year-old physical therapist living close to her Korean immigrant parents in New Jersey, still struggling with the expectations that come with being their daughter. Eli (Son Sukku) is a Korean American adoptee from a working-class family who has drifted away from wrestling and carries plenty of unresolved baggage of his own. They meet after Eli is involved in a car accident with Audrey’s mother, an unlikely beginning to a relationship that gradually forces both of them to reconsider the lives they’ve settled into.
“Bedford Park” also came out of Ahn reaching something of a crossroads herself. She had written other scripts that hadn’t been made and began pulling from old journal entries for what she considered one last attempt. The difference this time was how much of herself she was willing to put on the page. Ahn grew up in a Korean immigrant household where, as she describes it, love was often expressed through sacrifice. That sometimes came into conflict with the more Western idea that you can’t really love someone else until you learn to love yourself. Audrey’s story grew from somewhere inside that tension.
Ahn wasn’t interested in making a familiar story about an Asian American character searching for her identity. She wanted to question the need to define one so neatly. Audrey has one relationship with being Korean American. Eli, who was adopted by a white American family, has another. They don’t spend the movie explaining those differences to each other. Their connection develops largely without needing to.
“I think the dissolving of identity is something that feels scarier in a way,” Ahn told Awards Focus. “But it also makes you more vulnerable. That’s what I was really interested in with this movie, this vulnerability for these characters.”
Eli wasn’t even Korean American when Ahn first wrote him. The character was white in the original feature screenplay and stayed that way when Ahn made the 2023 proof-of-concept short “Accident.” That changed after Son expressed interest in the feature and asked why Eli couldn’t be Korean American. Ahn rewrote the role and found that giving Audrey and Eli two very different Korean American experiences added another layer to their relationship.
Ahn came to directing after years of working as an editor, including on films such as “My Old Lady.” “We’re all editing all the time,” she said during our conversation, talking not just about film but about the ways people construct and present versions of themselves. There’s something of that in Audrey and Eli too, as each slowly allows the other to see what they’ve kept beneath the surface.
Stephanie Ahn spoke to Awards Focus just after the film’s TIFF premiere about the decade-long journey to make “Bedford Park,” how her years as an editor shaped her approach to directing and why she ultimately had to get more personal to get the film made.
Ben Lei: I was lucky enough to see “Bedford Park” at TIFF and thought it was such a beautiful film. Before directing your first feature, you spent many years working as an editor. How has that background shaped the filmmaker you’re becoming?
Stephanie Ahn: I think it’s a huge influence on who I am as a filmmaker. Most obviously, I write like an editor and I direct like an editor. I see the relationship between shots as I’m shooting or as I’m writing.
Editing for me is all about rhythm. I’m feeling the rhythm in the script. I’m feeling the rhythm in production. So for sure, it affects the way that I work in the other aspects of filmmaking.
But also, as I tell people all the time, I think we’re all editing all the time, right? We’re all editing who we are. We’re constantly telling others who we are, the story of who we are, in the way that we speak and the way that we present ourselves. So I don’t think it’s specific to just being an actual film editor that informs me. I’m very aware of the fact that I’m editing every day as a human being, and that’s storytelling. I think that definitely affects the way I tell my stories as well.
BL: It’s been quite a journey to get this film made, about 10 years. What does this moment feel like now that you’ve gone to Sundance, had success there and seen the film screen at TIFF?
SA: How do I say this? The gratitude can’t be explained. I’m constantly thinking back to that filmmaker sitting in her room, just hoping that someone will read my scripts and be interested in maybe making this one day, or waiting all those years for financiers to see the merit in making a film like this.
I think back to that person a lot. I want to go back to that Stephanie and say, “It’s going to work out. Just trust the process. It’s going to work out.” I just want to give her a big hug and tell her, “You’re going to be great.”
When I think about it from that perspective, it actually makes me emotional. I’m just so grateful, so eternally grateful. No matter what happens at this point, having had this experience to share it with the people at Sundance and TIFF and anyone in between, and having Sony Pictures Classics believe in it, is a dream come true.
BL: Have you been surprised by the positive reaction? This isn’t a conventional love story, particularly in what it says about having to love yourself before you can truly love someone else. Were you ever concerned that audiences might not understand the choices you made?
SA: Sure. I knew that it was always a risky film. But I also knew that it would be riskier not to make the film I had the opportunity to make, something that I could really stand behind and believe in and that reflected who I was as a filmmaker and storyteller. That was scarier than the idea of this film not being widely or positively received.
What has actually surprised me so far about the audience reception is how the ending has not caused a fury, because it’s not a typical, maybe you could call it satisfying or unsatisfying ending. I don’t mean to categorize things that way, but I thought it might be very divisive among viewers. I’m so happily surprised to see that it’s been very much embraced, which is so lovely to say.
BL: You’ve had 10 years with this story, and as you said, you’re constantly editing. Once you finally started shooting and then moved into post-production, were you surprised by how much the film continued to change?
SA: Oh, definitely. The film isn’t stagnant through pre-production, production and post. It’s constantly evolving. As you put it together, your notions of what it was at a certain stage of the process will definitely change as the elements affect one another.
So yes, for sure. But at the same time, I can say that there are many aspects of this movie that stayed exactly the way I had intended. Because I had so much time to workshop the script and work with my actors, there were certain things that felt really solidified, really planted deeply. That’s also a blessing.
BL: You’ve talked about not necessarily wanting to make an Asian American film about finding your identity, but instead exploring the idea of not having to conform to a particular cultural identity. What did that look like for you in this story?
SA: I think searching for identity is important as well, but I always saw that as a narrowing of what the complexities of a person can be. Sometimes it can feel self-serving or ego-driven. Whereas when it’s about letting go of that, I feel like it’s actually about the relationship you have with others and the world around you, as opposed to who you are in this world.
For me, I really wanted to tell a story more about unifying, and these pieces that touch each other and fit together without having perfectly carved-out edges. They just mold into each other.
I think the dissolving of identity is something that feels scarier in a way, but it also makes you more vulnerable. That’s what I was really interested in with this movie, this vulnerability for these characters.
BL: You’ve also talked about realizing that you needed to get more personal in your writing. How much of Audrey comes from you, particularly her relationship with her Korean immigrant parents?
SA: A lot. I’ll say that much of her character comes from what I know of myself, but a lot of the events and some of the plot are fictionalized.
At the same time, I think Moon Choi, who plays Audrey, would agree with me that in casting her and developing the character, I really let go of this being anything that had to be autobiographical. I knew that it would be a stronger film if we let the characters become who they are, separate from me.
While they may have started or originated from my own experiences and who I was, it evolved and took into consideration some of Moon’s experiences and who she is, which I think made for a richer character in general.
BL: Your two leads, Moon Choi and Son Sukku are both remarkable in the film. What were you looking for in casting characters who can sometimes behave badly but still need to earn our empathy?
SA: In terms of both characters, something I was very interested in feeling, maybe not on the surface but under the skin, was something kind of scrappy and raw and unpolished.
With Moon, when I first met her, she gave this lovely audition tape. She was clearly a talented actress, but she actually did a self-interview at the end of the audition and introduced herself and said a little bit about who she was. It was actually that interview that really caught my interest because I saw this thick-skinned, tough persona that was very interesting to me. I also saw that she was someone who was going to work hard. All those things were what I wanted to feel in the Audrey character.
With Ku, it was a little bit more obvious. When I met him, he didn’t audition, but we met over Zoom and he had this flavor that was what Eli was: slightly self-protective, tough. I knew that he was feeling me out and trying to understand if he could trust me. Those things were really interesting to me.
I knew that if I was able to gain his trust, he would be willing to show the vulnerability underneath those things, which is what I really wanted to get to. If you have that kind of exterior, you’re hiding something. You’re protecting something. I really liked that complexity in him.
BL: Eli was originally conceived as white rather than Korean American. Once you made that change, did it unlock anything new in the storytelling or in his relationship with Audrey?
SA: It did. Making him Korean American, with a very different Korean American experience from Audrey, made their relationship more interesting and layered and their connection deeper.
Even though they don’t really talk about their Korean American experiences until that one scene toward the end, they relate to each other as human beings. But knowing that’s something brewing underneath both characters created an interesting tension between them and an understanding of each other, or maybe even a curiosity about each other, that was inherent in their interactions.
BL: Part of the journey to getting “Bedford Park” made involved developing the short film “Accident.” Did you learn anything from making the short that ultimately changed what the feature became?
SA: Because we had the script and were trying to get the feature made for so long before the short, the short had already come from a project that was very well developed. The characters and the storyline in the short had been workshopped ad nauseam. We already knew the tone and everything we wanted to capture, so not so much.
The main difference was that in the short, the Eli character was white. He does a beautiful job, but since then, as we just talked about, the changes that happened to the story once Eli became Korean American were the biggest learning experience.
BL: As an Asian American filmmaker, what you experienced trying to get “Bedford Park” made certainly isn’t uncommon. What have you learned from that process that you would pass along to other filmmakers trying to tell their own stories, particularly when it comes to finding the stories that actually resonate?
SA: I firmly believe that the more specific you are about the story and your voice, the more universal it actually is. That may seem against the grain of what you would think would be the case, but I do think the more specific you are, the more people can relate to it.
So if this were to turn into some form of advice, I would say don’t be afraid to be very personal and be detailed in those personal experiences, because that’s actually what’s going to speak to people.
BL: Has that lesson influenced what you want to do with your second film?
SA: Yeah, I’m writing my second film as we speak and always keeping that in mind. When I say specific, it’s not just about cultural details. I mean character details and details in general. Tell the story you want, but be specific. Really make it something that feels unique to your vision. Those are the things that are going to make it unique.
BL: It was lovely talking with you. I wish you continued luck on the festival circuit.
SA: Thank you so much, Ben. Really nice to talk to you too.
This article also appeared on AwardsFocus.com
