Sean Wang

Oscar-nominated director Sean Wang, following his acclaimed short film Nai Nai & Wài Pó, did not intend for his next project to be another story about his family. Yet, it was the story that wanted to be told. The theme resonated with Wang, having previously explored family dynamics within Asian American culture through the short dedicated to his own grandmothers. In Dìdi, the heart of the story became the relationship between a mother and her teenage son.

Coming-of-age stories for Asian Americans are a subject rarely explored in film. These communities grapple with balancing tradition and modernity, adding a layer of complexity to this universal experience. Dìdi takes on that challenge by telling the story of Chris, a 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy who struggles with balancing internal and external expectations in the summer of 2008.

Drawing on his own experiences, Wang explains how his upbringing informed the making of Dìdi: “That's kind of how I felt growing up in Fremont, California. I think we have seen a lot of narratives about what it feels like to be the one Asian or Asian American person in a sea of white people, and you're so aware of your ‘otherness.’ I felt like there was something that was a little more subtle about the experience that I wanted to try and capture in Dìdi: What does it feel like to be surrounded by a bunch of people who actually share the same language and share the similar cultures as you, but even within that environment, you still feel like an outsider? ”

Through its casting and nuanced character development, Dìdi offers a cathartic experience for those who have grappled with similar anxieties in their youth. In an interview with Timid, Wang discusses the filmmaking process as well as the inspiration, themes, and message of Dìdi.

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Timid Magazine: The characters in the movie draw inspiration from you and your family. Can you walk us through how you translated your personal experiences into the story?

Sean Wang: The seed of the idea was being inspired by a lot of the coming of age movies about that age that I loved; movies like Stand By Me were the primary inspiration at first, and then movies like Ratcatcher and This Is England. Even like Céline Sciamma’s Water Lilies, all of these movies explore a different facet of adolescent experience. They all explore loneliness, loss, or a sort of irreverence when it comes to boyhood. It really just occurred to me all those movies that I loved, I'd never seen one that stars an Asian American kid, especially the 13-year-old version!

Beyond that, one that stars an Asian American boy in a city surrounded by Asian Americans, where he's sort of like an outsider in a place where he feels like he should belong. It felt like within my own personal lens of growing up, there was so much that I didn't see in the movies that I loved. I felt like that was an access point—to get into something familiar, or evoke familiar emotions, but ultimately, presenting it in a way that hopefully feels very fresh and new.

TM: Thinking back on the filmmaking process, were there any moments where the story took you in an unexpected direction?

SW: I've heard a lot of filmmakers say, “You get to this point where the story tells you what it wants to be, in a way.” I think you only really get that when you live with the project for longer than usually what a short [film] takes. This film was a little bit more akin to Stand by Me or Superbad. It was much more about friendship, and there was a poignant way that we could take it. It needed to be balanced by the heart.

When I think back to my friends and [our] childhood, we look back at all these sort of insane, stupid, silly memories, but ultimately, there's a lot of heart. We would talk about very deep things, but also talk about the dumbest things you could possibly imagine. For the first few drafts of this movie, I deliberately tried to not have a family element. I wanted it to be this suburban wasteland of a sun-splashed summer where there weren't any parents around. That was when the story revealed itself to me—I really wanted to write about my family. I wanted to write about my mom or a relationship inspired by the relationship that I have with my mom, and also a mom character that was inspired by a lot of immigrant moms that I know—my friend's moms, all sorts of different cultures that weren't the traditional “tiger mom” that we see in the media so much. Ultimately, that was the eureka moment where I was like, “Oh, it's a mother and son story!” Once I realized that, it shaped the entire movie.

TM: We absolutely love that your grandma played the role of Nai Nai in the movie. What were some qualities you looked for when putting together the cast?

SW: The thing with Grandma's character in the movie—we knew that the character in the movie needed to be sort of stubborn and strong-willed. She's not a villain in the movie, but she is part of the engine that feeds into the mother's “Why she is [the way she is] and who she is.”

Grandma is like an antagonistic force. There is a world where that character could have been a little bit more one-sided and just stubborn, strong-willed, and stoic, but if you see Nai Nai and Waipo, neither of my grandmas are that type of character. I knew that I wanted a character in the movie to serve that narrative engine, but I didn't want her to be a villain. We needed Nai Nai to be someone that you could really fall in love with, not someone you rooted against, because there’s two sides of grandmotherhood in Asian American cultures. A lot of times it's like, they're both really stubborn, but they're only stubborn because they want the best for you.

When we thought of casting her, we had already shot the short. Waipo, because she's younger, we could actually entertain the idea of her being in a narrative movie. She has that thing where you hang out with her, and you put a camera on her, and it’s just like, “Oh my god, I love her.” She is just so funny and soulful, and we were like, “Okay, well, if she has that quality, but she has to ultimately say some mean things, you can at least see that it's coming from a place of love and at the end of the day.” Not to say that we didn't entertain other people, but we were always like, “If Waipo could pull this off, it would be a home run.”

TM: Yeah, and it also feels very genuine in that sense!

SW: And it made the whole process way more fun. If we're going to cast an actress, you know, “actress,” we should go out and cast someone who's going to give us that level of performance and experience. But if we're going to entertain the route of like, a non-actor for that role, there's no reason to look any further than my grandma. When we decided to go an untrained but very raw, very gentle, genuine route, we were like, “Alright, it's gotta be Grandma.”

TM: How did you explore the themes of insecurities and anxieties, which wasn’t as openly discussed in 2008 when the film takes place?

SW: That's a good question. I think the movie explores those insecurities by not talking about it. When you're 13, especially in the late 2000s, no one's really talking about those insecurities or the way they feel. The characters in the movie aren't either. They don't have the vocabulary to dissect and articulate the things that they're feeling like Chris in the movie. He just kind of acts. He's always trying. He has trouble expressing himself, and even when he wants to express himself one way, he ends up acting out another way.

A part of what I wanted to try and do was to just present things without judgment as they were. All those kids in the movie grew up to be people like you and me and like millennials that are now in their late 20s and 30s. Looking back, there's actually an adult perspective of like, “I understand how the things in my adolescence have shaped me for better or worse.” Every single decision was like, “Does this feel honest to being 13?” That's kind of what the movie is to me. It was sort of an exploration into my early 20s.

TM: This film dives into Asian American family dynamics. What do you hope non-Asian and non-diaspora Asian audiences take away from the movie and its themes?

SW: As I was saying before, when I watched movies like Stand By Me, The 400 Blows, or Ratcatcher, none of them starred Asian kids, right? Yet, I see a version of what I like about myself in those movies, and I hope that other people who aren't Asian or Asian American can see a version of their lives and our movie like I do. As much as it is an Asian American movie or a movie about an Asian American, the hope is that it's also just, at the end of the day, a movie about adolescence—the things that you go through when you're a kid, trying to find your way and navigate social situations and family situations.

TM: What’s next for you? Are there any current or future projects that you can share with us?

SW: I'm starting to write the next thing. It’s been a whirlwind few months. There's a couple of drafts that have already been done, but I've been very inspired to dive back in. Hopefully, hopefully, we make it in the next couple of years but also developing a bunch at the moment!

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Dìdi was released in the United States on July 26, 2024.

Disclaimer: This interview was edited for length and clarity.