Video: Gay Korean-American film among features at Sundance
Updated: 11/1/2012, 9:45 GMT
A film about a gay Korean man who yearns for a family – which the director used to come out to his own parents – will feature at this year’s Sundance festival.
The short film, Dol, in which a gay Korean man yearns for a family, was used by the director used to come out to his own parents.
Writer and director Andrew Ahn says he used the film to come out to his own parents, who agreed to feature in it as actors without knowing their son was gay.
In the film, Nick is a gay Korean-American man living in Los Angeles’ Korean neighbourhood with his partner.
When Nick attends his nephew’s dol, a traditional Korean first birthday party, he finds himself longing for a life out of reach to him.
Ahn said: “I made this film to come out to my parents. I knew I wouldn’t be able to tell them, to say the words ‘I’m gay’.
“So I cast my family in the film, but never told them that it was about a gay Korean-American man. The filmmaking process both distracted from and prepared me for the inevitable – that I would eventually have to show my parents the finished film.”
