AAPI Filmmakers on the Rise: Sean Wang
“AAPI Filmmakers on the Rise” is a bi-monthly profile series published as a collaboration between Asian CineVision and The Amp that spotlights rising AAPI filmmakers. This month, Nate Shu profiled Sean Wang, whose semi-autobiographical feature film “DÌDI (弟弟)” is already one of the year’s most celebrated films.
2024 has been an incredible year for young filmmaker Sean Wang. In January, he premiered his feature film DÌDI (弟弟) at Sundance Film Festival to rapturous reception and awards. Days later, his documentary short Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó was nominated for an Oscar. What’s followed since has been a series of two whirlwind press tours, filled with Q&As, television appearances, and more flights than even he can keep count of. “It’s been the most insane year of my life, that’s for sure,” Wang told me in a recent conversation. He was hugging a large Charizard plush—a present he received from Hilltop Gifts, a shop featured prominently in DÌDI (弟弟). “It’s hard to process in the moment.”
Opening in theaters nationwide on August 16, DÌDI (弟弟) follows Sean’s semi-autobiographical proxy, Chris Wang (played by Izaac Wang), a 13-year-old Taiwanese American skater growing up in an early aughts Fremont, California. Through Chris’s online and offline lives, the film explores Asian American adolescent angst and his relationships with his friends and family; his high-achieving older sister, Vivian (Shirley Chen); painter mother, Chungsing (the legendary Joan Chen); and his grandmother, Nǎi Nai (Sean’s own Oscar-nominated wài pó, Chang Li Hua).
The film is a love letter to the year 2008 and Sean’s hometown—a diverse suburb outside of San Francisco last seen cinematically in Babak Jalali’s 2023 film, Fremont. But while Babak’s film centers around the city’s large first generation immigrant population, DÌDI (弟弟) centers on the second generation experience. “I’ve always seen DÌDI (弟弟) as an exploration of what it feel like to be an outsider among outsiders,’" Sean explained. “Even though [my friends and I] were around a lot of Asian kids and a lot of people who looked and talked and shared similar cultures, we still didn’t feel like we could wholly belong.”
That outsider energy permeates through Sean’s filmmaking process. Having learned the craft through skateboarding, he joins the ever-growing canon of AAPI skaters-turned-filmmakers such as Bing Liu, Alika Tengan, and Andrew Fitzgerald. Wang’s hero, Spike Jonze, voices a cameo in the film. “You know how to do something with very little resources,” Sean reflected. “You kind of always remember that feeling as opposed to feeling like you can’t make anything because you don’t have $50,000—go grab a camera, grab your skateboard, grab a friend, and see what you can do!”
Despite the larger budget infrastructure of DÌDI (弟弟), throughout the filmmaking process, Sean continued to ask himself: “How do we infuse a skate video mentality to this? How can we still make it feel scrappy and fun?’” To that end Sean made it a point not to let expected industry standards get in the way of what felt right to him and his team. “The correct way to do things may not always be the right way to do things,” he explained. What are the choices only we could make on this movie?“
Sean’s past experiences on sets taught him the value of a free and open creative environment, one where crew members feel able to speak honestly about what will make the film better. The majority of DÌDI (弟弟)’s cast is comprised of unknown Bay Area teenagers with little to no prior acting experience. “My ethos with the movie and everyone I hired was I never just looked at their resume or their previous experience,” Sean said. “It was more of a vibe check: are we friends before collaborators?”
“I wanted to curate this set for myself and for everyone around me, especially the kids—a set that really felt egoless.” Sean described his set as the ultimate movie summer camp, complete with everything from ice cream and churro stands to playing the virgin Jesus in a talent show play written by DÌDI (弟弟)’s star, Izaac Wang. “So much of my job was just to create an environment where they could play and not have to worry about the infrastructure of filmmaking,” Sean explained. “We wanted to empower them to be teenagers and not actors.”
As Sean kickflips his way into filmmaker superstardom,—“The fact that Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó got nominated for an Oscar is so insane,” he joked—, his DIY philosophy to filmmaking has stayed very much the same. “The audience is me, my friends, and my family,” said Sean. “If it doesn’t work for them, it’s not going to work for anyone else—even if it does, it probably won’t feel good.”
“DÌDI (弟弟)” is now playing in select theaters, and in theaters nationwide August 16. “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó” is available to watch now on Disney+.
—Nate Shu is a contributing writer for Asian CineVision’s CineVue. He is also the Co-Programming Manager for Boston Asian American Film Festival and freelance stand up comedian and producer in the Boston area.