All Stories are Local—A conversation with Sean Wang

Sean Wang is a fan of coming-of-age movies, citing as a start Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me, François Truffaut’s New Wave classic The 400 Blows, Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher, Céline Sciamma’s Water Lilies, David Mickey Evans’ The Sandlot, and Eliza Hittman’s It Felt Like Love. But none of those movies stars an Asian kid or has a Taiwanese American kid from the East Bay as a protagonist. For that, Wang would have to make his own film, and he has with Festival opener Dìdi (弟弟).

“When I look at those movies, it’s not about a 13-year-old boy or girl, it’s about that 13-year-old boy or girl and it’s all the little details that culminate in their life that all of sudden make it feel like a movie you’ve never seen before,” Wang says during a recent Zoom call.

“That was the hope with our movie, too, that we can just make every detail sit on top of one another until it feels like this is a story that’s so specific, that feels like the rollercoaster of a great coming-of-age movie. The hope was for something that feels new but also feels familiar at the same time.”

What is Dìdi (弟弟) about?

Set and shot in Fremont, Wang’s hometown, the Sundance audience award winner and recipient of a special jury award for its ensemble, tells the semi-autobiographical tale of 13-year-old Chris (Izaac Wang) who experiences a rocky summer before starting high school. It is 2008 and Chris is locked into social media and is a budding videographer. But as he experiences first love, fights with his friends, tangles with his college-bound sister Vivian (Shirley Chen), and argues with his mom Chungsing (Festival honoree Joan Chen), his feelings are volatile and the sense of humiliation that comes with being 13 is too often present. His grandma Nai Nai (Wang’s real-life grandmother Chang Li Hua, one of the subjects of his Oscar®-nominated short film Nai Nai and Wài Pó) adores him but she can only provide so much comfort to a boy with roiling emotions.

“There’s a very clear one to one of the inspirations being a version of something that’s happened in my life, literally like my family, my friends, my upbringing,” Wang says. “I think a lot of it was sort of looking back at my childhood and things that I know intimately and realizing that the emotions I feel about certain experiences–I think emotions are universal, whether you’re talking about adolescence, adulthood, emotions of shame, love, fear joy. Everyone knows these emotions but the way you frame them and the way to get to those emotions vary from person to person.

“When I think of my specific experiences and me and my friends in Fremont, California, I realized I’ve never seen that version on screen and one that stars a group of friends in very multicultural community in a place like the Bay Area,” he adds. “It also takes place in the late 2000s and utilizes the sort of internet language that I think we were all sort of growing into. And the technology was moving so fast. I felt like I hadn’t seen this period captured accurately in the movies.”

What are the inspirations behind Wang’s first feature film?

Wang began writing Dìdi (弟弟) seven years ago. His original screenplay focused much more on Chris’ relationships with his friends. Wang describes his early efforts as akin to Stand By Me or Superbad. At the same time, he was making shorts that related to his mother, including 3000 Miles, a short documentary in which the voicemails she left him provides the film’s narration, and 1990, a short in which his sister becomes a mother and his mother a grandmother. And at work, he was working on projects for Mother’s Day.

Wang didn’t want to be “the mom filmmaker.” At the same time, when he read over his early efforts on Dìdi (弟弟), he realized there was something missing. Or someone.

“I think I have a very close but also complicated relationship with my mom that is so full of love,” Wang says. “I realized in writing the movie, I got to this point where I really wanted to write about my family, but especially my mom. I realized it’s the relationship in my life, that is the most of every emotion. It’s the most love and the most joy and the most care but also the root of the most anger and shame and regret and protection. It’s the most of every emotion, so I just felt there was a lot there.

“Once I realized it was about a mother-son relationship encased in the trappings of a movie like Stand By Me about adolescent friendships, that was the eureka moment. That cracked everything open for me.”

Dìdi (弟弟) is not just a story about a boy and his mother and his friends. It is also a Bay Area story, joining a family of recent films that include Fruitvale Station, Sorry to Bother You, Earth Mama, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Blindspotting, Medicine for Melancholy, and Fremont. When Wang was growing up he says he took his hometown and its environs for granted, It’s only in looking back as an adult that he realizes how special the place is and how it has come to inspire so many personal films.

“So many things were special and unique, things that I had never seen before in movies, you know, like to grow up around such a diverse multicultural community and get to learn about all these different cultures,” Wang says. “Not because it was educational taught in school, but because of where I grew up because of the proximity of my friends and the happenstance that I grew up in a deeply rooted immigrant community.

“The Bay Area at large is such fertile soil for so many different types of stories,” he adds. “I’ve been so inspired by the stories that have come out of the Bay Area and wanted to be part of that canon.”

Wang says he went into Dìdi (弟弟) with the dream of having a big Bay Area hometown premiere at SFFILM Festival. The festival previously screened two of his shorts, Have a Good Summer and Nai Nai and Wài Pó, and Dìdi (弟弟) came into the world with support from SFFILM Rainin Grant, SFFILM Invest, and SFFILM Dolby Institute Fellowship. Filmmaker and festival enjoy a strong relationship. And San Francisco is just a short ride from Fremont.

“The word that I keep describing in making this movie and our ethos in making the movie was to try to keep it homegrown, to try to make it feel very local,” Wang says. “And so, to come back and have our hometown premiere here with SFFILM, I’m so excited for all my friends from home, my hometown friends, all the Bay Area locals to see it and hopefully notice the landmarks that we shot and just have it feel very familiar.”

About the Author

Pam Grady is a freelance writer, whose work appears in the San Francisco Chronicle, 48 Hills, and other publications. She also has her own web site.

Stay In Touch With SFFILM

SFFILM is a nonprofit organization whose mission ensures independent voices in film are welcomed, heard, and given the resources to thrive. SFFILM works hard to bring the most exciting films and filmmakers to Bay Area movie lovers. To be the first to know what’s coming, sign up for our email alerts and watch your inbox.