WEST HOLLYWOOD, CALIF. — Sunmin Park can hardly contain her excitement. “Didn’t you see, ‘The Sea Inside’ won!” she exclaims.

That film, written and directed by Alejandro Amenábar, had just won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign-Language Film two nights before. The passion and dedication Park had devoted to help her friend Amenábar get the buzz out paid off. And now Park was about to head out from her Hollywood Hills home to join Amenábar and the movie’s leading man, Javier Bardem, among others, at another party to continue the celebration.

The bigger news, however, is that “The Sea Inside” has also been nominated for the Best Foreign Film Academy Award.

The other movie Park was hoping would garner an Oscar nomination didn’t get the nod. “Sky Blue,” the Korean animated film (or manhwa) that she produced, was released last Dec. 31 in Los Angeles for a special one-week engagement to qualify for this year’s Academy Awards. But it failed to join “The Incredibles,” “Shark Tale” and “Shrek 2” in the Animated Feature Film category.

But that does not faze her. The English-language version of “Sky Blue” that Park directed (the original Korean version was called “Wonderful Days” and was directed by Kim Moon Saeng) will still get a limited release here in the United States starting Feb. 25.

And with her film production and distribution company, Maxmedia, she has got a lot more on her producer’s plate, which resembles an international smorgasbord. “What interests me is exchanging stories between different cultures,” says Park. There are a few projects in the works with several directors in France and Spain, as well as one with a filmmaker in Bolivia. “We’re going to be doing a film in Africa based on the best-selling book, Shake Hands with the Devil, by the [United Nations] general, Romeo Dallaire, who served during the Rwandan genocide crisis,” says Park.

Scenes from “Sky Blue,” a Korean animated film (or manhwa) that includes a mixture of animation styles — 2-D, 3-D, live-action and miniatures. It has been praised for its sumptuous visual style. Set in a post-apocalyptic future where the blue sky is always blocked from view by a blanket of clouds, the film will be released in the United States Feb. 25.

Also on Park’s list is Amenábar’s next film — on which she won’t divulge any details.

The two have collaborated before. Maxmedia negotiated and sold the remake rights to his Spanish film “Abre Los Ojos” (“Open Your Eyes”) to Tom Cruise’s production company, and that became “Vanilla Sky.” Then she produced “The Others,” the supernatural thriller starring Nicole Kidman that Amenábar also wrote and directed.
“Since I’m a filmmaker, I want to produce with filmmakers that I admire, that I’m going to learn something from. And when I first met Alejandro, we had this great common love for music. And he’s a composer, and when I was younger in Korea, I used to write music as well. So we had that common bond,” says Park. “That, actually, made me feel more comfortable, being around a creative person.

“I mean I really love filmmaking, a sort of all-in-one filmmaking. Alejandro has scored every one of his films. He does everything, from writing and directing and producing and writing music to editing, all in one.”