Didi
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“The Budgetary Challenges of Getting a Dead Squirrel Puppet”: DP Sam Davis on Dìdi
In the opening scene of Dìdi, the titular 13-year-old and his friends film themselves blowing up a mailbox and making a run for it while laughing hysterically. It perfectly encapsulates director Sean Wang’s view of adolescence as “the worst version of yourself, having the best time of your life.” Set in 2008 in Wang’s hometown of Fremont, California, the coming-of-age story follows a Taiwanese American teen during his final summer before high school. Though not strictly autobiographical, the film was inspired by Wang’s own adolescence and the making of it was awash in familiarity. The main character’s bedroom scenes were […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Sep 16, 2024 -
“Everybody Passed on It”: Sean Wang on Dìdi
If having your first feature premiere at the Sundance Film Festival is an accomplishment, being nominated for an Academy Award the same week is pretty much unheard of. Nonetheless, that’s what writer-director Sean Wang experienced last January when his coming-of-age narrative feature, Dìdi, premiered to glowing reviews (and a distribution deal with Focus Features) while his nonfiction portrait of his two grandmothers, Nai Nai & Wài Pó, was nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary Short. Still in his 20s, Wang’s career has skyrocketed over the past year, and now Dìdi “younger brother” in Chinese) opens in theaters riding a […]
by Erik Luers on Jul 26, 2024 -
“We Knew It Was Going to Be a Bit of a Sprint”: Editor Arielle Zakowski on Didi
In the U.S. Dramatic Competition film Didi, the feature debut of writer-director Sean Wang, a Taiwanese American boy learns to skate handle the emotions of adolescent longing in the summer before high school. Set in 2008, the film is replete with period signifiers familiar to any child of the era, including MySpace friend rankings, AIM messaging, and Windows XP. In her discussion of Didi below, editor Arielle Zakowski, whose most recent credit is the 2023 computer screen film Missing, explains the importance of test screenings and how she brought the film’s period setting to life and contrasted the excitement of the […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 19, 2024
