“I feel like I’m in a fairy tale,” Sean Wang told a sold-out crowd at the Ray Theater in Park City, Utah, last month for his Sundance Film Festival debut.
Mr. Wang, a 29-year-old director, was dressed in a black suit and white Vans (a nod to his skateboarding roots). He clutched his chest in a display of how fast his heart was beating as he introduced his film, ‘Dìdi’. It’s a coming-of-age story about an angry, insecure 13-year-old Taiwanese boy trying to find his place in the world.
“I’m going to take a few seconds to look at all of this,” he said before snapping a photo of the audience. The warm crowd included Mr. Wang’s family and friends, the film’s cast and crew, and a handful of potential buyers who have the power to transform the station in his life from would-be filmmaker to bona fide Hollywood director.
It’s happened again. Luminaries like Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, Damien Chazelle, Ava DuVernay and Lulu Wang all went from hopeful dreamers to actual filmmakers, thanks in part to the Sundance Film Festival, which just completed its 40th year.
Mr. Wang is familiar with that pedigree and has apparently been preparing for his Sundance moment since discovering Spike Jonze’s skater videos as a teenager before attending film school at the University of Southern California. While working for the Google Creative Lab, he made a series of short films that mined different aspects of his childhood.
He has also participated in several Sundance programs, including one for filmmakers ages 18 to 25, a screenwriter’s workshop, and a director’s workshop. Each helped him refine his script, a personal film that honors his relationship with his mother and reimagines teen movies like “Stand By Me” and “Eighth Grade” through the lens of a first-generation American growing up in the cultural melting pot that was Fremont, California, in 2008. (Dìdi is Mandarin for little brother and a term beloved in Chinese culture.)
Now, after six years of rejecting his script and completing the film, Mr. Wang is taking his first steps into the limelight thanks to Sundance. The moment coincided with the promotion of his short film, ‘Nai Nai & Wài Pó’, about his two grandmothers. This film was recently nominated for an Academy Award in the Documentary Short category and will soon be available on Disney+.
“It’s almost too much to fully process,” he said in an interview. “It’s really exciting, it’s really surreal, it’s definitely nerve-wracking, but overall I feel good.”
Mr. Wang has already overcome some incredible odds. His film was selected from more than 4,000 entries. And it landed in the U.S. Sundance drama competition, a category that has spawned a string of Oscar contenders, including “CODA” and “Minari.”
In order for a film to be in the running for awards season, however — or even a film that can be seen by general audiences — it has to find a buyer. And that’s what Mr. Wang was hoping for at Sundance.
At a panel of first-time filmmakers, Mr. Wang agreed with other newcomers preparing to unveil their films. Instead of talking about work, the directors kept their focus on how they hoped audiences would react and how they had gotten their films made, many of them protesting that it happened at all.
“I’ll get emotional if I talk too much,” Mr. Wang said when asked about the people who stood by him during the filmmaking process. “I’m trying not to cry more than 10 times at this festival.”
Yet beneath all that gratitude was a low-grade anxiety: Would audiences and critics like the film, and would that be enough for a buyer to pick it up and plan to distribute it?
Before the film’s debut, Mr. Wang and his producers were holed up in a makeshift green room. “Dìdi” features a handful of leads alongside more seasoned veterans like Izaac Wang (“Good Boys”), who plays Didi, and Joan Chen (“The Last Emperor”), who plays his mother. The team chose not to screen the film for any buyers in advance.
“We really want to honor that experience and let the film speak for itself,” said producer Carlos López Estrada.
It was a decision that heightened the pressure of the moment and somehow preserved the feel of the film that Mr. Wang was desperate to protect.
“This movie has to feel community-driven, like it’s coming from the ground up, and not Hollywood coming to my hometown,” he said. “We did it successfully. My grandmother could be in a movie next to this ageless actress and it’s all like the same world because we kept it at home.”
The reception at the end of the film was dismal. The crowd gave the film a rapturous applause, and Mr. Wang once again wiped away his tears while soaking it all in.
Michelle Satter, the founding director of the Sundance Institute, was part of the crowd cheering on her budding director, as were notable directors such as Ryan Coogler (“Black Panther”) and Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”), who left the Sundance. at the Oscars. Mr. Wang attended her director’s workshop a few weeks before “Dìdi” began production, using the mountain scenery in Utah to rehearse his two most complex scenes.
“Sean is going to have an incredible career and we have complete faith in him,” Ms. Sutter said before Mr. Wang whisked her away to meet his family.
“Thank you for supporting Sean,” Cynthia Lee, Mr. Wang’s mother, told Ms. Satter in tears. “As a mother, I appreciate you.”
The reviews started pouring in as the filmmaking team made their way to the after party. The Hollywood Reporter called “Dìdi” “touching”, while Variety deemed it “fresh and funny”. IndieWire wrote that it created “a sense of time, place and texture that sets the funny, fleeting film apart from the Sundance Film Festival coming-of-age pack.”
The party was a lavish affair filled with Asian cuisine from the caterer’s Mama’s Night Market. The band Hellogoodbye, who perform in the film, performed at the party, and Mr Wang’s childhood bedroom, used in the film, was recreated in the venue’s lobby. The place was full and the guests were leaving. Mr. Wang was mobbed by adoring fans and excited colleagues. Outside of Park City, he is still unknown. But inside that room that night, he was a superstar.
“The discoveries at Sundance this year look very much like some of the truly exciting discoveries of filmmakers and films of the last 20 years,” said Tom Quinn, CEO of distributor Neon. “‘Didi’ fits. It heralds the dawn of this incredible new director.”
Adding to the excitement was Mr Wang’s Oscar nomination for his documentary about his grandmothers. He flew back from Utah to watch the early morning nomination announcement with his family at his childhood home. When “Nai Nai & Wài Pó” was announced as a finalist in the short film category, Mr. Wang buried his head in his grandmother’s lap and fell to the floor.
“I’ll never get used to it,” he later said in an interview.
“Dìdi” ended up winning the prestigious Sundance Audience Award, an award that in previous years had gone to films like “CODA” and “Whiplash.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Wang returned to his Los Angeles apartment. The sun was shining and he had a fresh haircut when Focus Features announced the purchase of the world rights to “Dìdi,” which will likely be released in theaters this summer, perhaps as an antidote to the blockbusters that usually consume theaters at the time .
It was an ending to a whirlwind adventure that many aspiring filmmakers can only dream of.
“There’s something about being in Park City where all the things that were happening to me didn’t seem real,” Mr. Wang said. “You’re in this snow globe of a place, and my attention was needed in so many places, every second of every day. To go back and then the news, it’s like, “Oh, wow, we actually did this.”
The sound is produced by Tally Abecassis.
