Bedford Park

This powerful and raw feature debut from writer-director Stephanie Ahn explores the complexities of diasporic experience through a chance encounter between two thirtysomething, second-generation Korean Americans. Tracking their relationship as it moves from circumstantial to friendly to romantic, Bedford Park brings deeper insight to what it means to self-actualize between cultures.

Eli (Son Sukku, My Liberation Notes) and Audrey (Moon Choi, Now, We Are Breaking Up) meet when Eli gets into a car accident with Audrey’s mother. They come to know each other when Audrey, as a way to make amends, volunteers to drive Eli to work. On the surface, their lives couldn’t appear more different: Eli was adopted by a white woman, raised with little connection to his roots, and works as a mall security guard, while Audrey grew up in a tumultuous household with her Korean-born parents, and is a physical therapist. Yet both characters seek to make peace with their present lives by reckoning with their respective pasts. For Eli, this means facing fatherhood, while Audrey struggles to free herself from her mother’s unreasonable expectations.

Ahn brings great sensitivity to her protagonists’ disparate needs, balancing the weight of personal identity and generational trauma. Bedford Park is not afraid to look at the darker, more painful wounds from cultural displacement and shows us that sometimes we need to parent ourselves to break harmful cycles.

ANITA LEE

Content advisory: self-harm, nudity, sexual content