Rising Filmmaker Sean Wang On Upcoming ‘Dìdi’ And Oscar-Nominated, Grandma-Powered ‘Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó’
21.02.2024 - 17:11
/ deadline.com
By any indicator, filmmaker Sean Wang has had a career year–and we’re only in Month Two. His narrative feature debut, Dìdi, captured the Audience Award and a Special Jury Award for Best Ensemble in the US Dramatic Competition at the recently concluded Sundance Film Festival, and that same week, he earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Short Subject for Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó (Grandma & Grandma). What’s more, Focus Features acquired Dìdi for a mid-summer release, and Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó just premiered on Disney+ as part of the streamer’s “People & Places” series.
This is not to dub Wang, 29, an overnight sensation, mind you. Dìdi was six years in the making, earning support from various Sundance Institute labs and Google Creative Labs. And during that gestation period, he made a number of shorts, including Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó, a charming slice-of-life capture of his two grandmothers as they exude the day-to-day joys of living–dancing, singing, cosplaying action heroes, cooking–while ruminating on the pains of aging and loss. Both widows, Nǎi Nai (Wang’s paternal grandmother, Yi Yan Fuei) and Wài Pó (his maternal grandmother, Chang Li Hua), live together in a house in Fremont, Calif., where the filmmaker grew up.
Wang’s nonfiction canon, mostly accessible on his website, explores a litany of interrelated themes: intergenerational bonding; the challenges of being an immigrant and the sacrifices they make for their children (Wang’s parents immigrated from Taiwan); expectations of first-generation children of immigrants; and the idea of home, assimilation, and what one leaves behind. There’s Wang’s 2016 work 3,000 Miles, a contemplation of a year in New York City, underscored by a series of voice-mail messages from