Get the latest gossip

Rising Filmmaker Sean Wang On Upcoming ‘Dìdi’ And Oscar-Nominated, Grandma-Powered ‘Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó’


Rising director Sean Wang on his Oscar-nominated documentary 'Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó' and his Sundance award-winning drama 'Dìdi.'

And during that gestation period, he made a number of shorts, including Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó, a charming slice-of-life capture of his two grandmothers as they exude the day-to-day joys of living–dancing, singing, cosplaying action heroes, cooking–while ruminating on the pains of aging and loss. There’s Wang’s 2016 work 3,000 Miles, a contemplation of a year in New York City, underscored by a series of voice-mail messages from his mother calling from across the country; his 2021 NYTimes Op-Docs piece Have a Good Summer, in which his middle-school yearbook serves as a cinematic foundation for reuniting with his classmates via recorded phone conversations about specific memories and deeper ruminations about the sacrifices their parents had made for them; 1990(2021), a two-minute reel of home videos of his sister and him, from their respective births to present; and Still Here(2020), in which Wang travels to his grandmother’s old village in Taiwan–now suffering from both neglect and gentrification–to interview her former neighbors who have elected to stay. Wang had lived with his grandmothers for a time, prior to making his short, which afforded him the opportunity to observe them carrying out the mundanities of their daily lives–-cooking, washing dishes, reading the newspaper, doing laundry.

Get the Android app

Or read this on Deadline

Read more on:

Photo of sean wang

sean wang

Photo of nǎi nai &

nǎi nai &

Related news:

News photo

‘Năi Nai & Wài Pó’ Director Sean Wang Wants His Love Letter To His Feisty Grandmas To Also Remind Us Of Hate Crimes Against Asians – Contenders Film: The Nominees