Reviews: Dìdi from Sundance 2024

Final Rating: 5/5

While we are still in the midst of the 2024 Oscars season at the moment, the race for the 2025 Oscars has begun with the annual Sundance Film Festival. While I have yet to make that pilgrimage out to Park City, Utah for the in person festival, this was my first year taking advantage of the online screenings being offered; usually I’m barely keeping ahead with the ongoing Oscars Death Race to try and forecast who will have the momentum out of Sundance to be relevant a year later. However two films caught my eye enough to buy virtual tickets – one when the festival lineup was announced, and one after it ended up winning a couple of prizes. 

Since Crazy Rich Asians blew open the gates for Asian American led content to hit the mainstream, Sundance has been a launching point for such stories. In 2019, Lulu Wang’s semi-autobiographical The Farewell screened in the US Dramatic Competition; while it failed to get an Oscar nomination that year, (#JusticeForNaiNai), it did have critical acclaim. It was named an AFI and NBR film of the year, and the Independent Spirit Awards Best Feature. 

In 2020, Lee Isaac Chung’s semi-autobiographical Minari won both the audience and jury awards for US Dramatic at Sundance; it would later receive six Oscar nominations, including a win for Youn Yuh-Jung as his grandmother for Best Supporting Actress. And then just this past year, Celine Song’s Past Lives which debuted at Sundance is once again in the Oscars contention with nominations for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.

Given this trend of Asian American filmmakers having semi-autobiographical films debut at Sundance, I wouldn’t be surprised if we are talking about Sean Wang’s Dìdi come awards season a year from now. After all, Wang is already nominated this awards cycle for his short documentary Nai Nai & Wài Pó (coming to Disney+ February 9th). Dìdi has already won the Sundance US Dramatic Audience Award as well as a Special Jury award for its Ensemble. But beyond the glib comparisons to past films, Dìdi truly has a lot of heart behind it and deftly captures the life and angst of a young second-generation teenager in the late 2000s (having been someone who was exactly that).

Dìdi (Mandarin for younger brother) follows Chris “Wang Wang” Wang played by Izaac Wang (Good Boys, Raya and the Last Dragon) during the summer between middle and high school. He lives alongside his mother, played impeccably by Joan Chen (The Last Emperor, Twin Peaks), his paternal grandmother, and his sister Vivian, who is about to leave for UCSD (a “good enough” school according to their mom’s friend). Chris spends his days hanging with his boys getting into trouble (the opening shot is a self-shot video of them blowing up a neighbor’s mailbox and running away), trying to learn to skate, and fighting with his sister. 

All the touchstones of late 2000s nostalgia are here, from the Paramore band posters to the Razr flip phones with customisable ringtones to the cringey homophobic middle school chatter. One element I want to call out is the use of screenlife – much like 2018’s Searching starring John Cho, a lot of characterization is done through the way Chris interfaces with his peers over social media – Myspace, Facebook, early YouTube and AOL Instant Messenger. From looking up his crush’s favorite movies on their profiles to keep a conversation going, to venting to the SmarterChild chatbot in a moment of loneliness, I wonder what the child actors in this film thought of the way we used to use technology fifteen years ago. 

Beyond just getting the vibes of what life in the late 2000s was like, this film also just has a very poignant coming of age story of trying to find oneself at that difficult time of transition. Multiple times throughout the film Chris tries to establish relationships with his peers, first with his crush Maddie, then with some older skaters. These new identities often come in the form of lying (of course he has seen A Walk to Remember, and he’s totally half-Asian, not full Asian), and/or deleting old videos of memories or blocking them on Instant Messenger. 

I could (painfully) relate with Chris’s attempts at making small talk or introducing oneself to new people by just kind of lurking in the corner silently until someone noticed me and said hi, though I was too much of a goody-two shoes to try to Wu-Tang a joint. In a sense, one could call this the young male version of Eighth Grade or Ladybird. 

In the background of all this, Joan Chen gives an Oscar worthy performance as the beleaguered first generation immigrant mother. In addition to doing her best to raise her two kids solo while her husband works overseas (with no indication that he plans on returning soon). She also has to contend with an overbearing mother in law who always finds something to criticize, while also struggling with her own life as a struggling painter. Chen is able to balance these external frustrations, her own frustrations with her rebellious child, and the deep seated love for him all in a nuanced performance that truly captures the immigrant mother experience. 

Ultimately, while my own experience as a second generation Asian American may be different from Sean or Chris Wang’s, I can’t help but see myself in Dìdi. Perhaps it’s the nostalgia talking, but as much as I cringe about what 13 year old Paulo thought was cool, it’s only now nearly 20 years later I can see how that time of my life – of everyone’s life – was both equally unimportant in the grand scheme of things, and yet also the most important formative time of my life. 

I’m glad that Sean Wang, if this film is based on his own story, was able to find the Video Production club in high school to set him on this path to capture the feeling and significance of this time to share with us and to add to the growing canon of Asian American cinema.