Stephanie Ahn began writing her feature debut, “Bedford Park,” about nine years ago. On Jan. 24, it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
The film follows Audrey (Moon Choi), a Korean-American woman drawn back to her hometown when her mother gets in a car accident, forced to reckon with past traumas in the process. When she meets Eli (Son Sukku), the man on the other end of the car accident, they initially get off on the wrong foot. But, when they’re inadvertently thrust together by fate, their relationship starts to evolve into something more.
“Bedford Park” deals in themes like family trauma and infertility, with a particular focus on Audrey’s difficult relationships with her parents. Ahn began writing the film soon after becoming a mother herself, but the story had been circling around her brain for years before then as something intensely personal that she needed to share.
Rough Draft Atlanta spoke with Ahn about the filmmaking process. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Going through your IMBD, I noticed that you’ve worked a lot as an editor, and I think you edited this film as well. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about making the transition from editing to filmmaking, and how you think being an editor helped you form your identity as a director.
Stephanie Ahn: My initial goals were always to be a writer and director, and I went to film school with that intention and have been writing scripts ever since. But, you know, I wasn’t making a living being a writer and director. So, I initially went into editing as a way to make a living, but still stay in the field. Being an editor – first of all, I loved it. And second of all, it was definitely like, the best film school ever. You get a very intimate view of the entirety of filmmaking. So I’ve learned a ton, and I’m sure it’s informed the way that I direct and write, even. When I went into the edit room for “Bedford Park,” I already had the mindset that I had to be brutal, and that killing your babies was just part of the process. I’d like to think I wasn’t too precious about anything. Also, being an editor has sort of fine tuned this idea of film being music and rhythm. It’s all about that rhythm. I really try to listen to that instinct inside when I’m editing, and working as a director – I mean, my actors have told me that I direct as if I already knew how to edit the scene. So I guess it manifests there as well.
Jumping off of that, when did you know that you were going to edit this movie? Close to the beginning?
Ahn: Yes and no. I was looking for an editor. I had not intended, or I didn’t know, if I wanted to edit or not. I thought there was a good chance I would just have an editor. But towards the middle of production, I just saw it in my head, how I was going to edit. It would be so silly for me not to get my hands in there, right? Not that my editor couldn’t do it, because he’s a fabulous editor, but … I needed to at least get my hands dirty, to some degree, in the edit room.
I can imagine, when you’re writing, you’re sort of thinking about the edit as well, if that’s the mindset you’re coming from.
Ahn: Definitely. When I’m writing scripts, there’s definitely an architecture of editing that I have in mind. I definitely think as an editor, as a filmmaker in general.
I saw that you have a short film called “Accident” that features a sequence from this movie. Where did this idea stem from, starting with the short and moving onto the feature?
Ahn: Actually, the feature came first. I had the script ready, and as we were looking for financing, we thought it would be a good idea to do a proof of concept. So that’s what “Accident” was meant to be, was a proof of concept. So we did a couple scenes, and kind of combined them into one for the short.
How did the story for the feature come to you? When did you start writing that first initial draft?
Ahn: The writing process happened probably almost nine years ago. It was about a year after I had my daughter, and I was a stay-at-home mom, and I just had this itch to write again. The germ of the idea had been growing for many, many years before that. Because it’s such a personal story about my Asian American experience, and an experience I think a lot of other Asian Americans had, it was just the story that I’ve always wanted to see, and eventually decided to tell myself. But the writing process began at that point, and when I was done with it, it took a couple years before I thought it was ready to share. And then the rest is history.
There’s so much specificity here. One of the examples that really struck me was Eli’s family background – the fact that he grew up with his biological mother, was adopted when he was 10 into a white family, his mom has a boyfriend, etc. It’s a very complex family situation. Knowing that you wrote it over nine years, did it start that way? How did this story evolve and change over those nine years that you were ruminating on it?
Ahn: Specifically with Eli’s story, that was not how it started. You can tell from “Accident,” even at that stage, the character was a white American male. He became a Korean-American character after the idea was introduced to me by some members of my team. I was very resistant to it, but then – I think the order of events was, they presented Son Sukku as a possible Asian version of this man. The idea wasn’t very appealing to me, but then I met him over Zoom. As soon as I met him, I just thought – oh my gosh, he would be amazing. It was just something about his vibe. So, I decided to give it a shot, and I wrote a draft turning Eli into a Korean-American character, and I just found it brought so many layers and a depth that I didn’t expect. And, in wanting to make his character have a very different experience from the Audrey character, I made him a Korean-American adoptee and gave him that backstory.
That’s interesting, hearing about meeting the actor and starting to lean a way that you weren’t before. Could you talk a little bit about the casting? I hear directors talk about having something on the page, and then meeting the actor and things start to evolve – I’d love it if you could talk a bit about that collaboration.
Ahn: [“Bedford Park”] started out very autobiographical, and the character of Audrey was very much based on me. I knew early on, even before we started thinking about casting, that that would change – that once I cast the actress, I always intended for the actress to take the role and run with it and make it her own. So, while it started out as being very based on my specific experiences and who I was, once we cast Moon Choi, she’s a very different person. We’re very similar in many ways, but she’s also very different from me, and I really wanted her to make it authentic to herself as well. I thought that bringing her own experiences and her temperaments and her personality to it would make it more interesting and more authentic, actually, to a character. The loyalty to who I was just didn’t make sense, and I think that could hurt the film.
We developed the character together. She was cast very early on, about six years ago, or seven years ago, and she and I have rehearsed ever since. We would go on a Zoom – she’s based in South Korea – sometimes every few weeks, for hours, and just talk about the character, talk about the story and the details about the character. We did that for years and years. That was also the case for Son Sukku. Once he was cast a couple years ago, I also wanted him to run with the character and make it his own. So he took the base of the character that I wrote and brought his own ideas. Both characters had to have a certain structure and a certain dynamic that would make the story work. So we stayed true to that, but we were very open to hearing each other about expanding that.
Earlier, you mentioned that when you started writing this you had just become a mom. The relationship between Audrey and her mom really struck me. I think for as tough as the parents can be in this movie, there’s a real sense of empathy, particularly for her. That struck me as very realized, and hearing that you had just become a mom yourself, I wonder how that affected your writing of that character?
Ahn: Yeah, I’m sure it had a big effect. Becoming a parent, I think a lot of people can agree that you understand your own parents in a different way. I certainly did. I saw them from a very different angle. I think I had a lot more sympathy for how hard it is, in general, just to be a parent, and how you have these great intentions, but because of our own patterns, and the things that we grow up with – we bring that to our method of parenthood, to our own children. It’s not always our fault, and trying to break that pattern was something I was very much aware of, and wanted to do. But in that same vein, I had a lot of understanding of who my mother was and how hard she tried.
You’d made some shorts before, but what was the most challenging part of this shoot as your first feature film experience?
Ahn: I mean, definitely finding funding was very much a challenge [laughs]. That goes unsaid. For me, writing is always difficult, very isolating. Editing is also very difficult. There’s a lot of joy in editing, but it’s also where you see your mistakes. I’m very hard on myself, so I would see things that I wish I had done differently in the edit room. That can be brutal. But, luckily, I have a great editing partner who I trusted implicitly, and he was amazing, to just have as a voice of reason who really understood the vision and believed in the film.
That’s amazing. How did you guys meet?
Ahn: So, Malcolm Jamieson – we had worked together many years ago. I was his assistant editor and then, on that film, became a co-editor with him. We just kind of stayed in touch over the years, and we have very similar tastes in films. He’s got amazing integrity in his work, and I always just loved his work style and his sensitivity. His sensitivity is very, very sharp, and his eye for truth is very sharp. I knew he was definitely on the top of my list as someone I would love to work with . Luckily, he was available. I was lucky to have had that experience with him in the past.
You mentioned that you guys have similar taste in films. Were there any movies you looked to for inspiration for “Bedford Park?”
Ahn: Specifically for “Bedford Park,” there were a handful of films that inspired me, for sure. I think some of them would be “A Separation,” by Asghar Farhadi; “Secret Sunshine,” by Lee Chang-dong; “Rust and Bone,” by Jacques Audiard. There’s a very beautiful small film called “Museum Hours,” by Jem Cohen, and I love the relationship in that film, it really inspired me. Michael Mann’s “The Insider,” and “Incendies,” by Denis Villeneuve, is something I watched over and over again. There are different reasons for all these different films, but that’s just a small taste of what had inspired me.
There are a couple moments in this film I really liked, just because of how devoid of dialogue they were – not that I didn’t like the dialogue as well. But, I’m thinking specifically of that moment that features the score from “Rocky,” and the moments where Eli is wrestling as well. It just allows the actors the space to breathe. I wondered if you could talk about crafting those moments sans dialogue, and using cinema as that visual medium.
Ahn: You know, words have limitations. I’ve always felt that, even before I was a filmmaker. As a kid, even, I always felt like there’s only so much you can express with words. That’s why my love of film really began – that visual medium always communicated something that words couldn’t, for me. So that was always important to me. I think part of the goal with this film was to have very specific structure to the plot and character development – I think that’s the editor in me – but to balance that with moments where there’s poetry, and the characters can breathe, and you can sit with them, and you can feel the nebulous feelings that they might be having. I wanted the audience to just be there and sit with it, because those are the moments that speak to me very loudly in other films.
Yeah, the “Rocky” moment in particular I love. It almost feels that, like Eli, you’re telling us to stop as well. Eli is telling Audrey to stop, and just let the music take hold. I thought it was very lovely.
Ahn: Thank you. Yeah, you know, film, as I always say – it’s music, it’s rhythm, and it’s about balancing pace and finding that rhythm. I think having these pauses or quiet moments is a very important part of rhythm, so finding those moments for that, wherever it’s appropriate, is very important for me.