Dìdi (弟弟): A coming-of-age movie about Asian teens in 00s USA

As a 13-year-old growing up in Fremont, Sean Wang was told he was “cute for an Asian”, “the coolest Asian I know”, and “I don’t see you as Asian”. “In 2008, I took that as a compliment,” says Wang, now a 30-year-old speaking to me in NBCUniversal’s London offices. “It was only in my twenties that I was like, ‘That’s not a compliment. That’s fucked up.’” Wang acknowledges he’s sat with a journalist who went through a similar trajectory. “It’s subtle. You don’t know how much it affects you until much later.”

Wang is also discussing his directorial debut feature, Dìdi, a semi-autobiographical drama about a 13-year-old Taiwanese-American kid, Chris Wang (Izaac Wang), who is, not so coincidentally, told by his crush, “You’re cute for an Asian.” Also set in 2008, Dìdi invites comparisons with Wang’s own life: it was shot in Fremont; Chris’s bedroom is, literally, Wang’s own childhood bedroom; Chris’s grandmother is even played by Wang’s own grandmother, Chang Li Hua, an 86-year-old woman made famous by his Oscar-nominated short Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó.

“I had this ethos that the movie should take place in 2008 but feel like it was made now,” says Wang. “It’s a very honest portrait of that time. But watching it in 2024, you see all the lessons we had to unlearn, and all the things we had to realise were not as healthy as they could have been. I didn’t want it to be revisionist history.”

Chris, then, surrounds himself with obnoxious boys at the bottom of the social ladder who obsess over attainable videogames, unattainable girls, and goading each other with offensive language. It’s so believable, you’ll often find yourself cringing – in a way the film intends. Later, when a chance encounter leads to Madi (Mahaela Park) implying that Chris’s lack of Asianness makes him kissable, he barely blinks; when expanding his friendship circle, he instinctively pretends to be half-white. “The kid in the movie doesn’t know what’s good or bad, but we do now,” says Wang. “The hope was to present things as they were, and we can judge the film on its own terms.”

In terms of narrative, Dìdi is comparable to small, intimate coming-of-agers like Eighth Grade and Peppermint Candy, all of which are more character studies than three-act thrillers. While Wang’s screenplay introduces a few threads – fraught arguments with his overworked mother (Joan Chen) and all-knowing sister (Shirley Chen), chief among them – it’s mostly chapters of someone’s life that, through their humour and honesty, keep the viewer engaged. Emotions at that age are oversized: even if Chris’s eventual despair that he’s all alone is laughably overdramatic, the sharp writing means that you empathise with him entirely.

After all, in 2008, Chris didn’t have a film like Dìdi to own on DVD or download from Kazaa; he may, perhaps, have caught Sixteen Candles on TV, specifically a monstrously racist scene with Long Duk Dong. So when Chris attempts to impress Madi by faking adoration for the films on her Facebook profile, he encounters teen comedies populated by white protagonists. Until recently, English-language coming-of-age movies were an almost entirely white genre, but Wang is reluctant to overthink it.

“White people have told every story for the last 100 years,” Wang says, laughing. “But I don’t see this movie as an Asian-American twist on a genre. I see it more as a movie about an Asian-American. What makes it an Asian-American movie is that it stars an Asian-American boy, and it’s really hyper-specific to that experience. We put the character first, before the genre.”

Before Dìdi, Wang worked on short films, including Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó, a 17-minute documentary about his two grandmothers that was nominated at the 2024 Oscars in the non-fiction short category. “In documentaries, you’re trying to be spontaneous and capture the moment in a way that’s honest,” says Wang. “And in narratives, you try to bring documentary spontaneity to it. We’re always trying to capture something that feels alive.”

For viewers of a certain age, the tensest, most riveting sequences in Dìdi take place entirely on a screen within a screen. True to the 2008 setting, Chris interacts with friends and romantic interests on Myspace, Facebook, and AOL Messenger. Forget car chases and shoot-outs: your heartbeat races when Chris interacts in real time over online chat with Madi; it’s equally devastating when he realises he’s no longer in a former BFF’s top eight on Myspace. Wang not only used to work at Google Creative Lab, but he took over from Aneesh Chaganty, who left to direct Searching, the ultimate “computer screen” movie.

“In the year-and-a-half that Aneesh was making Searching, I was at Google, learning all the things that he implemented into Searching,” says Wang. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh, I’m learning a new filmmaking language that not a lot of people have in their tool kit.’ Searching is a truly seminal movie but I didn’t want to make Searching 2. I felt, with this movie, there was an opportunity to bring the internet we grew up with back to life.” Wang recently screened the film for 12-year-olds, none of whom were alive in 2008. “They didn’t know the programmes, but they understood what it’s like to message your crush. They understood it in a way that was exciting.”

Wang is secretive about his next film, calling it “less about identity in an explicit way but still very personal”. A clue about Wang’s future might be within Dìdi: due to a chance encounter, Chris ends up videoing older skateboarders as they perform tricks and ollies around carparks. Likewise, Wang was a skateboarder, as was his hero, Spike Jonze. “Spike is the reason I became a filmmaker,” he explains. “He was my biggest inspiration as far as realising you can make no-budget skate videos and Jackass but also Her and Being John Malkovich. Don’t put yourself in a box.”

He continues, “Skating informed the way I dressed, the way I talked, the music I listened to. Because of those things, people would say to me, ‘You’re the whitest Asian I know.’ But that wasn’t a label I was chasing. When people call you that, you’re like, ‘Why? Oh, it’s all the things I like.’” Wang pauses, almost lost for words. “It’s the way people perceive you, and not having the vocabulary to unpack it, and not realising it until your twenties, when you’re like, ‘Why did people say that to me?’” He adds, “The kid in the movie grows up to be people like you and me. To watch it, and realise it, and unpack it – we’re doing that in real time now.”

Dìdi is out in UK cinemas on August 2