Spotlight: Reimagining THE WEDDING BANQUET with Andrew Ahn
About this Spotlight
Spotlight Events feature conversations with high-profile film and television industry professionals who share helpful advice and insights on their career experiences and creative process. You do not need to have seen the work to participate.
Join Sundance Collab and acclaimed director Andrew Ahn (Fire Island, Driveways, Spa Night) for an exclusive conversation on Ahn’s film, The Wedding Banquet, a 2025 Sundance Film Festival hit, and a contemporary reimagining of Ang Lee’s 1993 classic of the same name.
The Wedding Banquet is a joyful comedy of errors about a chosen family navigating cultural identity, queerness, and family expectations. Frustrated with his commitment-phobic boyfriend, Chris, and running out of time, Min makes a proposal: a green card marriage with his friend Angela in exchange for expensive in vitro fertilization treatments for her partner, Lee. Plans change when Min’s grandmother surprises them with an elaborate Korean wedding banquet.
In this session, we talk about the creative process behind reimagining a classic film for a contemporary audience, collaborating with James Schamus who co-wrote the 1993 film, infusing your voice into an existing story, and working with an exceptional cast, which includes Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, Joan Chen, and Academy Award-winner, Youn Yuh-jung.
This conversation will offer the opportunity to gain insight about this hilarious and heartfelt film, and a Q&A with director and co-writer, Andrew Ahn.
SpotlightTeam
Andrew Ahn
Filmmaker/Writer/Director
Andrew Ahn is a queer Korean American filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Ahn's latest film The Wedding Banquet starring Lily Gladstone, Bowen Yang, and Kelly Marie Tran premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and is distributed by Bleecker Street and Universal International. His previous film Fire Island (Searchlight Pictures) was nominated for two Emmy Awards and won the Ensemble Tribute at the 2023 Gotham Awards and a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Film Streaming/TV. Ahn's sophomore feature Driveways premiered at the 2019 Berlinale and was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards.
Ahn's first film Spa Night premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and won a Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Performance. The film went on to win the 2017 John Cassavetes Film Independent Spirit Award. Ahn has directed both fiction and documentary television, including shows Bridgerton and Generation. He has promoted diversity in the arts by mentoring youth filmmakers through programs like Pacific Arts Movement’s Reel Voices, Outfest’s OutSet, and the Sundance Institute's Native Filmmaker Lab. He graduated from Brown University and received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).
Katherine Street
Moderator | Digital Course & Event Producer
Katherine "Kat" Street is an LA-based award-winning filmmaker and Philadelphia native. A cinephile at heart, she writes female-driven stories with complex (oftentimes damaged) main characters, centered around self-discovery, self-love, and belonging.
She has written numerous short-form projects, including original shorts, pilots, and features. She wrote and directed the dramatic short film “Cycles,” which received festival recognition in both acting and best romantic short. She also created her award-winning flagship web series "The New Adult,” which is currently streaming on Kweli TV.
Kat is a Stowe Story Lab SAGIndie Fellow and a participant in the BlackMagic Collective Emerging Filmmakers Initiative. In 2021, she founded the Black Film Challenge, a project that showcases filmmakers of African descent and the movies they create.
She earned her BFA from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts with a concentration in Cinematography and has literary representation with Yak Yak Mgmt.