Moon Choi on Bedford Park, Being on the Busan Jury, and the Brilliance of Jeon Do-yeon

In Stephanie Ahn’s Bedford Park, Moon Choi plays Audrey, a self-destructive health care worker trapped in a paralyzing relationship with her immigrant parents. The drama, which won the Special Jury Award for Debut Feature at Sundance earlier this year, screened at this year’s Busan International Film Festival ahead of a release from Sony Pictures Classics.

Choi and director Stephanie Ahn appeared at Q&As at the BIFF screenings. Choi was also a member of the Competition Jury, led by Zhang Yimou. She arrived in Busan after a two-week run of The Cherry Orchard at New York’s Park Avenue Armory.

The Film Stage: Bedford Park opens with an intense S&M scene and proceeds through several disturbing moments. How dark were you willing to go?

Moon Choi: To be honest, these are some of my most challenging scenes as an actor. Looking back at my career, I did have some dark or heavily emotional scenes in the past, but what Audrey’s going through in this movie is pretty dark, especially in the beginning. But I don’t really think about it in those terms. I just thought that this is something she is placed into abruptly. Something that she has to go through moment to moment. I didn’t necessarily think: How should I approach this? Should I approach it in a different way from the lighter scenes? I just tried to focus on what she’s actually going through physically and mentally step by step. It was challenging, but I wasn’t uncomfortable about it.

You needed these scenes to define Audrey’s character.

Not only does she go through a miscarriage, but she falls into this habit of self-harming. Meeting up with a stranger, having a one-night stand, having S&M sex, hurting herself with a razor. That’s all very cruel things to do. But when you think about it, there’s something inside her that tries to punish her without being aware of it. Because she thinks that she’s not perfectly being herself. Because she’s trying to make up to her parents’ expectations of who they want her to be. She’s been living her life in a shell of a person for 35 years. 

Self-harming, meeting these strangers for violent sex is kind of a way for her to escape. I don’t think she’s enjoying it. She’s hurting herself, punishing herself for not being able to have ownership in her own life. 

She’s facing impossible expectations from her parents. No one could live that way. The movie shows how her brother self-medicates in his own way.

Logically, it was hard to follow how she ended up that way, but I talked to Stephanie for years and years about this. After I learned that this is where she’s coming from, then afterwards, it was easier. I wasn’t afraid to be on set in that scene. It was more of the process before going on set that was a little tough for me, to try to really feel grounded as an actor who knows that character thoroughly.

How did this production compare to your films in Korea? Did you consider it a small film?

I’ve done both commercial and indie films in Korea. One really micro-budget film called Our Body cost less than $50,000. But I’ve also done Okja. Deliver Us from Evil was a huge blockbuster action thriller in Korea. This was a rather small production, but it felt pretty good. There was so much trust between Stephanie, the producers, and my co-actors. It was a friendly set, like a family. We did feel rushed at times. 

The scenes with my parents, those were shot in two days. We shot from me arriving with a suitcase at the parents, then Audrey getting the note from Eli (played by Son Suk-ku). We couldn’t shoot in order because of the lighting. We’d go from scene 80 or something to scene 3. I had that experience before with micro-budget films. 

You can’t really think of the actor’s process in that situation. What’s important is to save time on lighting and setting up. I felt lucky that I was used to that, because let’s say if I’d only done a big TV series or big commercial films back in Korea, I think going through those scenes in such a rush would’ve been very stressful.

A small production can be an advantage because you don’t get distracted by crew members and equipment.

Also, Son Suk-ku and I didn’t really take time to monitor our acting. I know there are actors who want to play back and see every take, we aren’t like that. We trust that when we feel truthful, the camera must have captured it. So, we didn’t necessarily go through playbacks. That saved time. When an actor goes, “Can we stop for a moment and check what we have?”—that’s when you lose time. We were like, if Stephanie says it’s okay, it’s good, and we just move on.

Moon Choi © 2026 Sundance Institute | photo by Breanna Downs

Did you ever run out of time?

No, I don’t think so. Sometimes Stephanie would say okay after two or three takes because it was great. Sometimes she would explore, do five or six takes to see what happens 

There’s a scene with Audrey and Eli in the car where we listen to the Rocky theme. It’s a long take. We’re starting to listen to the music, getting immersed in it, feeling something very different with each other than what we felt before. Also being present in the moment, in that close space together. We knew that scene was a little different from other scenes where we cut back and forth. We took some time with that scene. I think it’s the seventh take in the movie. 

We shot it in a studio, with the camera starting outside the windshield and then kind of zooming and tracking in together. No cuts. I think it’s a three-minute take. We had the sound people play the song in the car so we could hear it. So, yeah, those scenes take time, but I don’t think we ever went over something like ten takes.

Is there an advantage to working quickly? You have to get everything out there at once.

The thing is, we had so much time for pre-production because I was cast for this part seven years ago. I was working on Korean films and TV series. Whenever I finished a project, I would take time to talk to Stephanie and tell her how my experience went and what I learned from it. Sometimes I would go back to our script and say, “You know, I never thought about this scene in that way, but after finishing this project, now I have more of a sense of it.” You kind of take bits from one project to another, and you learn from this character to that character to build more layers and complexities for Audrey. This was when I was expecting to perform two or three years later when we had the financing ready. We were very frustrated that we didn’t have all of the money, but then I was kind of just thinking, “This will be good for me because I’ll never again have seven years for pre-production for a character.” I literally grew old with her.

When I was cast for the part, I was 30 or 31. Audrey’s supposed to be 36. Stephanie used to say that I looked too young, psychologically and physically. I thought, what difference does it make to be 30 instead of 35? But after 35, you have more life experience in my career, and in my personal life. I found out that Stephanie and I went to the same high school in New Jersey. I lived in the States for three years, from the age of 14 to 17. And that was in Tenafly, a small town in Bergen County, New Jersey.

It’s a beautiful town. But at the time, I thought it was way too much nature. There were deer and rabbits and geese flying around. I came from Seoul, very metropolitan, very crowded. I didn’t speak English. I spent those years learning the language, meeting my first boyfriend, making friends with classmates. Those years really formed me. When I learned that Stephanie went to the same high school, it’s probably why I felt so drawn to the character of Audrey.

Shooting on actual locations helped ground your film. Like that awful shopping mall where Eli works.

The one in Paramus. I used to go there with my mom. My aunt still lives in Paramus. So the shoot was like homecoming for me. The whole experience of being cast in this film, waiting for it to happen, learning about Stephanie’s life and her parents growing old with her, shooting in New Jersey. The whole experience for me as an actor was like a dream come true.

You have a producing credit on the film. You also did still photography.

Originally, Audrey would be drawing with a pad. When Stephanie realized I have a passion for film photography, she was like, “Can you do that actually?” We made that Audrey’s hobby, something she feels very attached to, something that makes her feel like herself. Stephanie wrote this amazing monologue about how Audrey’s father made the family pose in front of his camera, and that’s why she never asks anyone to pose for her.

Bedford Park

Can you talk about being on the Competition jury? This is the first year Busan is an Oscar-qualifying festival.

I felt a lot of pressure when I was asked to be a member of the jury. When I saw the names of the other jurors, I realized I was going to be the only Korean actor. I’ve been in the industry for 17 years, working on everything from indies to blockbusters, in Korea, Japan, and America, so maybe there’s something I can contribute to the team. Also, I can learn from Zhang Yimou or Bi Gan or July Jung, an amazing Korean female director. We had our first meeting yesterday. It was a lot of fun, and we were pretty much aligned. We’re in pretty good shape.

You just finished a run of The Cherry Orchard in New York, playing with Jeon Do-yeon and Park Hae-soo.

We’ve been touring for three years. We started in Seoul, went to Busan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, and finally New York. Usually we’d perform three or four shows at each venue, but in New York we had a two-week run. Sandra Hüller came one night, which thrilled everyone in the cast.

Jeon Do-yeon is also in Possible Love, where she gives a heartbreaking performance.

She’s Korea’s Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore and Nicole Kidman, all combined together. I grew up watching her films. Whenever I told her that, she’s like, “Stop, that makes me feel old.” Working with her was such a big privilege. To be honest, I was so nervous in rehearsals I couldn’t look her in the eye. When she’s acting, she’s so vulnerable, and she opens all channels to you without any prejudice and without any calculation. She makes your acting better because she’s so good.

She’s willing to be the character and not protect herself as an actress, not try to hold onto something that would let viewers know she’s not really that person. 

That’s the kind of actor I aspire to be. She gives everything to the audience. She’s vulnerable, and therefore lovable, but also she’s so human. In Possible Love, she wants to set herself free and set her husband free, and she does everything she can to get there. But she can’t help watching these rich people being nice but also condescending. They’re not your friends. They say they love you, but do they? Is that even possible? The layers that Lee Chang-dong built in that film were so amazing to watch that after the credits were over, I couldn’t get up from my seat.

Bedford Park screened at the 2026 Busan International Film Festival and opens March 5, following a qualifying run beginning Dec. 11 at NYC’s Village East and LA’s Laemmle NoHo 7.