We chat to director Sean Wang about his autobiographical Sundance hit Dìdi, in UK cinemas now.
When I caught up with director Sean Wang in London in early June, he was severely jet lagged but also, he admitted, “over-caffeinated”. It’s safe to say that Wang has had a busy year: after his feature debut, Dìdi premiered at Sundance in January, heās since been nominated for an Oscar for his short film NĒi Nai & Wài Pó.
Ahead of our interview, Wang had flown in to attend the UK premiere of Dìdi at Sundance London, where the film got a warm, even rapturous reception at the Picturehouse Central. Wang says that, although he never stays for the whole film, he does stick around for a few minutes at the beginning to catch the audience’s first reactions to a story that so closely mimics his own upbringing.
“I pinch myself every time,” Wang says of hearing the audience laugh. Hereās what else the filmmaker had to say about his charming coming-of age drama:
Youāve had such a crazy year, in all kinds of ways. Have you been able to recover and regroup at all?
Yes, and no. Itās been a really wild few months; prepping the movie, shooting the movie, editing the movie, getting into Sundance, then going to Sundanceā¦ It felt like this truly whirlwind, beautiful, insane journey. And then right after Sundance, it was the Oscars. It was just like, what is happening? I kept asking myself that. There [are] moments where it all kind of hits you at once, and you just break down really low. So after the Oscars, I went to Hawaii for 10 days, for a little bit.
Dìdi is your first feature film, youāve done a lot of shorts. What was the biggest challenge of tackling a feature film?
I think just like the scale. Not that weāre a huge movie, but itās definitely bigger than anything Iāve ever done. That and time, you never have enough time. I selfishly designed it in a way where I wanted to surround myself with collaborators who felt like friends, who are my friends. I didnāt want the jump from shorts to features to feel like a jump even though it was. It felt familiar even though I had never done it before.
Was the writing process any different? Did you have to structure it more purposefully?
One thing about our movie is itās not super plot-driven, I didnāt want to force an extraneous plot. That didnāt feel honest to the experience of what it was like to be 13 and the summer in Northern California. So how do you weave in structure to something that doesnāt have it? How do you have an engine when you donāt have something where the kid is like I have to go to the castle to save my girl? If you really break down our movie, there is structure. It was just trying to figure out different engines that we could give the movie without it feeling like weāre just forcing you from A to B to C to D.
Read more: Dìdi review | Sean Wang’s feature debut is one of the best films of 2024 so far
The first thing that I noticed was a lot of Paramore in the film. Were you a bit of an emo kid?
Yes, still am!
What made Paramore special above all the other emo rock bands?
Me and my producer Carlos, weāre both emo kids at heart. I think Paramore specifically meant so much to so many people. Theyāre still a band. Theyāre not like a nostalgia band the way that a lot of bands are. Theyāre still making music. Haley (Williams, lead singer) was the coolest front woman in the scene and she still is. It just felt like the right band that [Chrisā] crush would like. A lot of my friends who were female, and also male, loved Paramore.
And youāve said a lot in interviews that Dìdi is not a direct memoir. What are the aspects that you plugged from your own life into the script and onto the screen?
I think the ones that are obvious. I was 13, in the late 2000s, I am the same ethnicity. I had an older sister who was four and a half years older than me, who was leaving for college when I was entering high school. I grew up in Northern California and obviously, I was a skater too. It was like a love letter to all these things in my life that have shaped me. I allowed myself to be a little shameless in wearing those influences on my sleeve and the movieās sleeve.
Ultimately, I wasnāt interested in just splattering memories on screen. What is personal and autobiographical? How do we tell a story? What are the themes of our movie, what are the themes of the story? To me, the themes of the movie are shame and love, how different versions of shame, ā whether itās personal shame, cultural shame, societal shame ā can manifest in this main characterās life, and how that can keep him from accepting different forms of love from his family, from his friends [and] from himself. And once I realised thatās the heartbeat of the movie, everything was just modified, changed, conjured and fictionalised to serve that theme, that story and that emotion.
Thereās a scene in the film where someone says to Chris āYouāre pretty cute for an Asian.ā What inspired that line?
Thatās the line that I have heard in my life. A lot of my friends heard that. I think the way itās played in the movie is a little more ambiguous. When I was growing up, people would say to me, like, āYouāre the cutest Asian,ā or āYouāre cool for an Asianā or like, āI donāt even see you as Asian.ā In the movie. itās played as a compliment and itās meant to be a compliment.
I think when youāre that age, you take that [as] a badge of honour because it is a compliment. It [wasnāt] until I was in my 20s where I looked back and I was like, it was kind of f**ked up. I have a friend whoās Bangladeshi and he was like, āI remember this girl was like, āYouāre the hottest Indian I know.ā And [back then] he was like, āYes!ā Now, heās like, Iām not even Indian. The things that you accept when youāre a kid to just fit in and be accepted and be liked… Itās not until later that you look back and youāre like thereās something insidious about that. Again, it comes from a good place for the people saying it, itās not meant to be casually racist or anything, but you donāt have the vocabulary [for it] when youāre young.
Have things changed? Are kids still going through that same experience?
I hope Asian kids today are getting comments like āYouāre hot!ā
Chris tells people heās half Asian. Where did that come from?
Well, heās not half Asian. The movie is him figuring out different parts of his identity. Heās lying about being half white. This is getting very in the weeds of it, but when someone says āyouāre cute for an Asianā, you really dissect that. The girl [Chris] has a crush on is half Asian, so heās kind of like, āWell, I want to be accepted and cool and liked.ā He kind of [tries] to see if it gets him any social currency. Kids say the darndest thingsā¦
Izaac, who plays Chris, is phenomenal, but heās living such a different childhood than we did. How did you go about directing him? Did you have to explain all these things like MySpace to him?
Not really honestly. The MySpace stuff was all built in post, so [he] never really had to interact with it. It honestly wasnāt that different. It wasnāt like changing everything youāre doing to be a 13-year-old in the late 2000s. He was 14 when we shot [the film] but being that age now and then, I really believe it is the same.
Itās not that different in the same way that I watched Stand By Me many years later and I was like, āThatās me and my friends.ā The context is different, but the emotions are the same. It was like, “Look, you know what itās like to be that age, much more viscerally than I could remember being that age and trying to write it, just kind of bring that version and then weāll modify it if it feels like itās not right for the period.” Like sometimes theyāll say like, āAlright, betā and I was like, āDonāt say that word, because itās not period specific,ā but the energy that youāre giving off and that sort of irreverent, adolescent chaos is right, that feels just like it did when we were young.
Did you rehearse a lot or was it more like you said, you modify things on the spot? Was that on set or earlier on when you were doing read throughs?
I had a very special gift of getting to do the Sundance Directors Lab five weeks before we shot the movie and I got to bring Izaac and Shirley [Chen] who plays Vivian in the movie. That was like a one week intense workshop, so that was kind of our rehearsal period. Otherwise, we didnāt really get any rehearsal period.
Izaac is also the type of actor that doesnāt like to rehearse. He doesnāt want it to feel dry when weāre doing a take. During the directorās lab, we just got to sit and hang and get to know each other, both on a director-actor relationship level, but also just human to human and talk so, so deeply about the character, who he is and what motivates him and why he does the things that he does. It wasnāt a tonne of blocking type of work, it was really just [about] getting really deep into character. And heās so smart. Once he kind of internalised all of that, he knew the character inside and out. The performance of the movie really is a performance, itās not just like, āIām gonna be myself, and youāre gonna capture itā. Itās really calculated.
Is that the same with all the dynamics within the film? Because itās such a special dynamic between the siblings and then between Chris and his mum, played by Joan Chen.
Joan and Izaac never got official rehearsal time together. But thatās how indie filmmaking is, [thereās] not a tonne of rehearsal. You hire people that you feel have chemistry and can work with one another. Sometimes you [have to] trust the film gods that itāll work out. And Iām glad it did.
Joan is so incredible in the role, too. How did she come aboard?
She needs no introduction. She gave us so much. Only in looking back at the process of working with her, did I process [it]. Because in the moment, if Iām like, “Oh, my gosh, sheās worked with Ang Lee”, I would just crumble, but she has no ego. Sheās the best, so generous, so warm, so giving, so thoughtful, and so loving. She gave us what we needed, which was a calibre of talent and performance that elevated the character. It was more beautiful than I could have ever imagined, but she also gave the production a warmth.
I wanted the production to feel homegrown, I wanted it to feel small and intimate. She fit right in, she knew the assignment and her daughter became a big part of the production too. She would stay on set to do origami with my sister, Shirley and Isaac and it just felt like we [had known] each other for years and years. Sheās from the Bay Area, too, so it felt very local. Itās only when I zoom out sometimes Iām like, she is also the Joan Chen, in the best way possible. She never once exuded that energy to us. She was always an incredible collaborator, so grounded. It was such a gift that she gave me to work with.
A lot of your previous shorts are very family and friends centric. So when you decide to pursue a certain story or an aspect, what kind of conversations do you have with your family and those friends? I loved H.A.G.S., I thought that was like such a clever idea.
The conversations are on-going. Iām very grateful that my family is so supportive of my filmmaking. My mom and my sister are both associate producers on the movie because they helped us location scout, they really helped us kind of build this movie. I think my favourite thing about working within this kind of space is that it challenges me as a human to be a better son, a better brother. Theyāre so supportive of the filmmaking, so itās conversations that we want to have.
Dìdi is in cinemas now.