“Bedford Park,” written and directed by Stephanie Ahn, which premiered this week at the Sundance Film Festival, is a debut shaped by years of reflection and courage.
The film centers on Audrey, a Korean American woman caught between family obligation and her own sense of identity. But when she meets Eli, an ex-wrestler confronting his past, an unexpected journey begins, shaped by cultural pressure, emotional vulnerability and chosen love.
“’Bedford Park’ is the kind of raw and inspiring love story and family drama I believe we urgently need right now,” said Ahn. “It’s a story about transcending cultural definitions of love and opening up to that terrifying place inside us where our most vulnerable selves live, as a path to loving ourselves and others.”
For Ahn, choosing to tell this story was not immediate. The idea began nearly a decade ago, long before the film took its final form, stemming from a growing frustration with the absence of Asian American stories that felt truthful to her own lived experience.
“I really wanted an Asian American story that resonated with me, and it just wasn’t out there,” Ahn said. “The stories I was seeing were effective in their own ways, but it wasn’t tapping into the feelings that I had and some of the struggles that I had to go through as an Asian American.”
For years, Ahn said she waited, hoping someone else might tell that story not feeling brave enough to do so herself. That hesitation eventually gave way to a quiet resolve to try. She began writing what would become “Bedford Park” through journal entries and free writing, allowing characters to take shape and the screenplay to slowly emerge.
“It was very autobiographical at first,” she said. “But as you write, I think it’s important to develop things so that they have their own life. Being too loyal to your own story, I think, can hurt a story that you want to share with the world.”
At the heart of “Bedford Park” is a meditation on empathy, cultural identity and the quiet weight of inherited pain, grounded in the realities of an immigrant story. Ahn said she sees film as a powerful way to bridge lived experiences and invite audiences into unfamiliar emotional contexts.
“Empathy is one of the most beautiful things film can do,” she said. “I got so much of my understanding of the human condition from watching films from Europe and Asia and South America and Africa. I don’t know if I would have had the same understanding of other cultures without film.”
That intention seamlessly extends to the film’s exploration of “han” — a Korean cultural concept describing deep, collective sorrow and unresolved grief — a feeling that slowly reveals itself as the film unfolds. Though the concept was not present in early drafts, Ahn said it emerged organically as the story took shape.
“As I finalized the screenplay, or in the later stages of development, I think I noticed that ‘han’ was something that I felt,” she said. “So it was kind of born out of the story itself.”
For Ahn, film and art can be restorative not only for those who create it, but also for those who encounter it.
“When I see a beautiful film that speaks to my heart, it’s very healing,” she said. “It doesn’t have to mirror my life or my background. Feeling other people’s joys and sorrows is universal, and film can do that in a powerful way.”
That emotional resonance extends beyond the film’s narrative into its use of music. Rather than using score to direct emotional response, Ahn said she approaches music as an emotional presence meant to reflect ambiguity of feelings.
“I wanted the music to feel like an emotion,” she said. “To mirror what the characters might be feeling without telling the audience where to go emotionally.”
That approach comes into focus during a shared car ride between Audrey and Eli, shaped by the “Rocky” theme song that comes on the radio. As the music plays, the moment becomes a quiet emotional exchange, shifting from lightheartedness into something more intimate and unspoken.
“I wanted that piece, that score, that film, to be meaningful for Eli, and when it comes on and you can see that it’s meaningful for him, that’s very moving, but then seeing that Audrey can go from almost making fun of him to getting swept up in just the beauty of the score is, for me, so powerful,” said Ahn. “I just wanted to have a shared moment of intimacy that’s unexpected, that’s not about words, but it’s through music and just the shared experience.”
This scene, Ahn said, resonates with her own personal history.
“That movie is so meaningful to me. And I think part of it was that when my family and I first immigrated to the United States, that movie somehow was a shared language for my parents, who spoke no English. They could understand that film,” she said. “It was a film that I watched as a little girl, and totally understood. It was this underdog story, something I think can speak a lot to immigrants who come here with nothing. So it really resonated with us.”
Since “Bedford Park” is Ahn’s first feature film, having a Sundance premiere is especially meaningful to her.
“It’s been a long journey,” she said. “To be here, in the Sundance community, among these films, is an immense honor. I don’t think it’s fully hit me yet.”
‘Bedford Park’ in-person screenings
- 2:30 p.m., Jan. 28, Eccles Theatre
- 6:00 p.m., Jan. 30, Megaplex Redstone – 4
- 2:15 p.m., Jan. 31, Broadway Centre Cinemas – 3
Online
- 8 a.m., Jan. 29-11:55 p.m., Feb. 1