{"id":879422,"date":"2026-10-12T07:12:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T07:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/879422\/"},"modified":"2026-10-12T07:12:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T07:12:08","slug":"moon-choi-on-bedford-park-busan-jury-duty-and-adapting-french-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/879422\/","title":{"rendered":"Moon Choi on ‘Bedford Park,’ Busan Jury Duty and Adapting French Play"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFor several years after the biggest run of her career, Moon Choi<\/a>, known in Korea as Choi Hee-seo, kept her trophies out of sight.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe haul was substantial. Her turn as Japanese anarchist Kaneko Fumiko in \u201cAnarchist from Colony\u201d swept Korea\u2019s new actress prizes, and her lead role in independent feature \u201cOur Body,\u201d which bowed in Toronto, earned her Busan International Film Festival<\/a>\u2019s Actress of the Year honor in 2018. By her own count, two films brought her 14 awards in a single year. She was around 30.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSome years passed, and I put the trophies in the cabinet. I didn\u2019t want to have them displayed because whenever I saw them displayed somewhere, I kind of felt pressure,\u201d Choi tells Variety. \u201cI felt like I had to prove something to show them that I was worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI felt that being successful at a young age can do some bad things to you. It didn\u2019t make me feel proud, but it actually kind of made me feel crestfallen because I felt like I had to reach a height that goes beyond those awards,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat followed was a stretch she describes candidly: more independent films, Korean TV series that \u201cflopped really badly\u201d and film \u201cA Girl with Closed Eyes\u201d with Kim Minha that still has no release date two years after its Busan premiere. Through all of it, she was waiting for \u201cBedford Park<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tChoi is now back in Busan in a different role, sitting on the seven-member jury for the festival\u2019s competition section, which is only in its second year. Zhang Yimou presides over a panel that also includes Bi Gan, Kei Ishikawa, July Jung, Vietnamese producer Tran Thi Bich Ngoc and Kazakh actor Samal Yeslyamova. \u201cBedford Park\u201d is also in town, screening in the Flash Forward section.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t have the pressure that I need to prove anything to anybody,\u201d Choi says of returning as a juror. \u201cI\u2019m kind of feeling like a student trying to learn from all these films that I\u2019m going to be watching alongside amazing people like Zhang Yimou and Bi Gan.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHer yardstick for the competition comes from Asghar Farhadi\u2019s idea that a good film begins once the audience leaves the cinema. Two days before heading to Busan, she watched Lee Chang-dong\u2019s \u201cPossible Love,\u201d starring her friend and stage partner Jeon Do-yeon, on the big screen with her father. Outside the theater, the pair argued over whether the film\u2019s final shot of a full moon offers hope. Her father read the title as a paradox pointing to an impossible love; she saw the opposite.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI just felt so fulfilled because of those conversations I had with my father, which is rare,\u201d Choi says. \u201cI want to look for the films that leave us with these amazing questions as we exit the theater, rather than the films that I feel like that give us definitive answers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs an actor, she adds, she will be watching for performances that linger \u201cnot because they were so perfect, but because they were so truthful in the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWritten and directed by Stephanie Ahn, \u201cBedford Park\u201d follows Audrey (Choi), a Korean American physical therapist in New Jersey caught between her immigrant parents\u2019 expectations and her own life. After her mother is hurt in a car accident, Audrey forms an unlikely bond with Eli (Son Suk-ku), the former wrestler who was behind the wheel. The film world premiered in Sundance\u2019s U.S. Dramatic competition in January and won the Special Jury Award for Debut Feature. Sony Pictures Classics picked up worldwide rights during the festival, and the film has since played Toronto\u2019s Discovery program.<\/p>\n

\n\tChoi auditioned seven years ago. Ahn sent her the full screenplay in advance, which she says is rare, and she finished it on her phone in one sitting. Audrey\u2019s tug-of-war between being a dutiful Korean daughter and living for herself mirrored her own upbringing: Japan from the ages of nine to 12, two years in Seoul, then three in New Jersey. Back in Korea, classmates teased her as \u201cthe Japanese kid.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt seemed like wherever I went, I didn\u2019t belong anywhere because when I came back to Seoul from Japan or the U.S., people would view me as that girl from Japan, that girl from the U.S.,\u201d Choi says. \u201cAlthough I\u2019m not a Korean American immigrant, I thought that I could resonate with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAudrey\u2019s profession gave Choi another way into the character. \u201cI felt like she had such a warm heart for others, but she didn\u2019t know how to do that for herself,\u201d she says, linking that to the value Korean and Japanese families place on self-sacrifice. \u201cI think Audrey was fighting against that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film took years to finance. Choi was unknown in the U.S., Ahn was a first-time director coming from editing, and Eli was originally written as a white character, with names like Tom Hardy and Jake Gyllenhaal floated as a dream. COVID shut everything down. Four years in, the team shot a 15-minute short as a proof of concept for financiers.<\/p>\n

\n\tChoi showed it to Son, a friend of a decade from the days when they would drop off casting resumes together. By then he had broken out as a star, and he told her he would want the role if Eli were Korean American. She pitched the idea of rewriting Eli as a Korean American adoptee to Ahn, who met Son over Zoom and reworked the script for him. Son in turn brought in Hyundai Motor Company, which backed the film as its first investment in an independent feature, and Foster and Ahn made Choi an executive producer. Foster produces alongside Russ Krasnoff, Chris S. Lee, Theresa Kang, Son and Nina Yang Bongiovi, whose earlier Sundance launches include \u201cSorry to Bother You\u201d and Rebecca Hall\u2019s \u201cPassing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey were kind enough and generous enough for me to be able to focus on acting on set,\u201d Choi says. Post-production brought three-hour Zoom calls over cuts and music cues. \u201cThat was, I think, when I felt like, \u2018Oh, this is what producing feels like.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWatching the finished film at Sundance, she says, felt like \u201cgiving birth to something so valuable,\u201d a sentiment Son shared.<\/p>\n

\n\tChoi has rarely followed the conventional path for a Korean actor. A voracious reader as a child, she kept looking for scripts that could surprise her. That didn\u2019t always sit well with K-dramas and Korean commercial films, where with some scripts, she says, you know exactly what will happen on the next page. That choosiness earned her a reputation for \u201cindependent and artsy movies.\u201d After New Jersey, she enrolled at Seoul\u2019s Yonsei University to read journalism and English literature, spending her evenings training as an actor with its student theater club, and later took a year of acting courses at UC Berkeley on an exchange program. She is also the author of a collection of short stories and poems. Along the way she appeared in Bong Joon Ho\u2019s \u201cOkja\u201d and shot a two-hour feature in Gangneung with Japanese actor Joe Odagiri, who she says came to Korea and worked for next to nothing.<\/p>\n

\n\tChoi recalls a conversation with Jeon in New York, where the pair recently closed the final leg of Simon Stone\u2019s staging of \u201cThe Cherry Orchard.\u201d The production premiered in Seoul in 2024 with Jeon and \u201cSquid Game\u201d actor Park Hae-soo, then toured Hong Kong, Singapore and Adelaide before landing at New York\u2019s Park Avenue Armory in September.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe just held my hands, and she said, \u2018Moon \u2026 I\u2019m so happy for you, and just know that you are greater than what you think you are,\u2019\u201d Choi says.<\/p>\n

\n\tChoi already has one directing credit, \u201cBandi,\u201d her short for the 2021 \u201cUnframed\u201d anthology, in which she, Son, Park Jeong-min and Lee Je-hoon each directed a short. Choi and Son also wrote theirs. She says she never set out to direct and writes screenplays mainly for the pleasure of it.<\/p>\n

\n\tA new project may change that. Choi has signed on to lead a Korean stage adaptation of \u201cUne histoire d\u2019amour,\u201d the play by French writer-director and actor Alexis Michalik that follows a lesbian couple\u2019s attempt to have a child. The play premiered in 2020, picked up a Moli\u00e8re for its staging that year, and Michalik has since made it into a film. Choi will perform it in Seoul next year, and after a Zoom call with Michalik she has his blessing to option it for a screen version she pictures in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShould I direct it, produce it? I\u2019m not sure,\u201d Choi says. What she does know is that she wants to write the screenplay herself, which she says \u201cwould kind of give me an idea if I want to produce it, or act in it, or direct it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe global reach of K-pop and series like \u201cSquid Game\u201d has opened doors for Korean actors abroad, Choi says, but whether they can act in English remains the limit. Choi now acts in English, Korean and Japanese, but she only started learning English at 15, and Ahn hired a dialect coach for both leads so they would sound like Korean Americans from New Jersey. \u201cI know I can do it because I\u2019ve done it once,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt home, she sees Korean cinema in recovery but leaning hard on genre, particularly horror, a pattern she also noticed in Los Angeles meetings. Park Chan-wook and Lee Chang-dong have delivered new films in back-to-back years, and she points to Na Hong-Jin and Byun Sung-hyun among those who followed them. But she wants more filmmakers her own age, in their late 30s or early 40s, and singles out Son, who runs his own production company and is writing his first feature.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe feels a responsibility there too, she says, \u201cbecause I produce now as well, I can probably be the forefront of that, because it\u2019s generation, right? Who do we have after Lee Chang-dong and Park Chan-wook?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor now, Choi is on the festival circuit with \u201cBedford Park\u201d and hunting for an English-language role. She signed with Gersh and management company Cognition six months ago and has been auditioning and sending self-tapes since.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI am a total newcomer in Hollywood,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd the screen version of \u201cUne histoire d\u2019amour\u201d? \u201cI don\u2019t know, it\u2019s going to take 10 years, maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For several years after the biggest run of her career, Moon Choi, known in Korea as Choi Hee-seo,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":879423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[99439,43398,236,88,369703],"class_list":["post-879422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-bedford-park","tag-busan-international-film-festival","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-moon-choi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/879423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}