Andrew Ahn
Birthdate: Mar 10, 1986
Birthplace: Los Angeles, California, USA
Andrew Ahn is a Korean-American filmmaker who first made a splash with his first short films (Andy in 2010, Dol (First Birthday) in 2011) which premiered at Slamdance and Sundance Film Festival respectively, and then developed his feature debut as director/writer, Spa Night (2016), via the 2013 Sundance Screenwriters Lab, the Film Independent Directing Lab and a Sundance Institute Cinereach Feature Film Fellow grant.
Spa Night, about a closeted young Korean-American teen boy, premiered three years later in competition at the Sundance Film Festival, starred Joe Seo (who won Sundance’s U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Performance), and was released by Strand Releasing.
Ahn was director of Driveways (2019), with Hong Chau, Lucas Jaye, Christine Ebersole, and Brian Dennehy, which had a robust film festival run starting in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, but was pulled from a theatrical release due to the COVID-19 pandemic and released on VOD by FilmRise. Ahn’s next directorial project, Fire Island (2022), co-starring Joel Kim Booster, Bowen Yang, Conrad Ricamora, and Margaret Cho, was similarly denied a theatrical run despite being bought by Fox Searchlight and streamed on Hulu.
Ahn returned to his roles as director/writer of a theatrically released movie, the rom-com The Wedding Banquet (2025), which Ahn adapted with co-screenwriter James Schamus from the script which Schamus co-wrote with Ang Lee and Neil Peng for the original 1993 version directed by Lee, and which starred Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone and Joan Chen, and released wide by Bleecker Street (US and Canada) and Universal Pictures (rest of world).
Personal life
Andrew Ahn was born and raised in Los Angeles by his Korean-born immigrant parents. Ahn attended and graduated from Brown University with Bachelor’s Degree in English, and then attended California Institute of the Arts, where he earned an MFA in Film Directing.
Known For
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Awards
Winner, John Cassavetes Award, Independent Spirit Awards (2017); Winner, Best Narrative Short Film, Outfest Film Festival Awards (2012).
John Cassavetes Award
Film Independent Spirit Awards
Someone to Watch Award
Film Independent Spirit Awards
Andrew Ahn Movies
director
Previous (2)
- 2025 |
The Wedding Banquet
A gay man makes a deal with his lesbian friend: a green-card marriage for him, in exchange for in vitro fertilization treatments for her. Plans evolve as Min's grandmother surprises them with a Korean wedding banquet.
- 2016 |
actor
Previous (5)
Facts About Andrew Ahn
Coming Out: Andrew Ahn has stated that he made his second short film, Dol (2011), as a means to come out to his parents as a gay man.
Andrew Ahn News
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