It’s safe to say that director Sean Wang is having an incredible year, despite the fact we’re only two months into it. It’s not everyday that you would receive two of the biggest news of your life all within a week.

On January 19, the Taiwanese American director premiered his debut feature film, Dìdi (弟弟) — meaning “little brother” in Mandarin — at Sundance, winning both the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award and the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Best Ensemble Cast. Before Wang could even take a moment to relax and breathe, only five days later, his short documentary, Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó, would be nominated for an Academy Award. 

“It’s so surreal that all of this is happening at the same time,” Wang tells The Nerds of Color over Zoom on Wednesday morning. “My first feature premiered at Sundance and that experience [was an] out of body experience. Then getting nominated for an Oscar is its own special and unreal experience. Having both happen at the same time, I’m so grateful that it’s happening.”

Since then, Wang’s life has been a whirlwind filled with celebrations, meetings, and press days surrounding his many projects, particularly Nai Nai & Wai Po. With the Academy Awards coming up in two weeks, Wang has been nonstop working on the awards circuit, doing interviews and attending Academy events. Although he’s “a little tired,” he’s enjoying every moment. He’s most looking forward to attending the Oscars with his dates, the stars of his documentary, grandmothers Yi Yan Fuei and Chang Li Hia.

The short documentary, Nai Nai & Wai Po — which translates in Mandarin as ‘paternal grandmother’ and ‘maternal grandmother’ — premiered on February 9 on Disney+ and Hulu. The heartwarming film follows the daily lives of Wang’s two elderly grandmothers, who are best friends living together. Each day, they do fun routines to keep up with their physical and mental state by singing, dancing, stretching, reading, watching TV, and doing silly skits with Wang, who lived with them for a few months. Wanting to preserve their story, he captures their fears, joys, and reflections of the past, as well as their positive outlook on life, aging, and death.

Wang is no stranger to telling stories around his life and family. His 2017 short, 3000 Miles, documented his year in New York, chronicled by voicemails from his mother back home in Fremont, California. His 2020 short, Still Here, told the story of the few residents who refuse to leave their now-abandoned village in Taiwan, where his Wai Po used to live. For an Op-Ed in The New York Times in 2021, Wang directed the short H.A.G.S. (Have a Great Summer), a portrait about growing up told through the pages of his middle school yearbook. His first feature film, Dìdi (弟弟), is a coming-of-age story surrounding an impressionable 13-year-old Taiwanese American kid from Fremont, California and his last month of summer before high school. For Wang, each of these personal stories reflected the feelings he felt during those moments in his life and how he wanted to contain them through film, like a time capsule. 

Below, Wang talks about the documentary Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó, his identity as an Asian American, and what he thinks his 13-year-old self would think of his life now.

The Nerds of Color: As someone who was very close to their grandmother, I truly connected with this documentary. It’s beautiful. How has the reception for this film been since it’s been released?

Sean Wang: It’s been pretty overwhelmingly positive, which is good. People can watch it on Disney+ and Hulu. Going back to the ethos of this movie, [I] just really wanted to share that love, that joy, that humanity that Nai Nai and Wài Pó, exude [and] what I feel with them on a day-to-day basis. I really wanted to share that with as many people as possible. Now that it is accessible for so many people, just getting those messages and that influx of [people telling me that] ‘I see a version of me and my grandmothers.’ It’s just that idea that these very specific Chinese grandmothers and my relationship to them can transcend cultures and language. And [there are] other people, who don’t demographically align with me, are able to see a version of them and their grandmothers or someone like them in their lives. It’s also a movie about friendship and sisterhood. People are able to see a lot of different things in it, which is really special.

I understand the film was created to bring a sense of joy during the time of COVID uncertainty and the heightened Asian hate crimes. How did you decide to structure this documentary into what it was? How did you decide what was necessary?

I was living with them for a few months before we even shot the documentary. As much as I wanted it to be widely shared and having them feel seen in a way with [a big] audience, I also just completely selfishly wanted to make something for myself. And when I remember that time in my life now, I remember Wài Pó washing the dishes and Nǎi Nai reading the newspaper — and I want to remember those images. I want this movie to be almost like a time capsule of this moment in my life. [My producer partner] Sam [Davis] and I didn’t really have a shot list, but I had the images in my head [of] when I think back [to] this time 10 years from now, [these are the] images from my daily life that I wanted to film and capture. It goes back to the mundane rhythms of their life, chopping through, composting, but also juxtaposed some skits and more child-like collaboration that we have. That was kind of it — filming it all and not knowing exactly how it was going to weave together in the edit. But, knowing that moment to moment, we were shooting, we [thought] “this was special. I’m glad we’re filming this,” and knowing that it’ll all work out. 

Being Asian American, we are able to live our lives because of the sacrifices our families have given us — as told in your previous documentary, H.A.G.S. As Asian Americans, we do lose bits and pieces of our identity as we become more “Americanized”. What sense of identity did making the documentary give you? Did it give you a sense of identity? Have these documentaries that you’ve made given you a sense of identity or was your goal to reconnect to that aspect of your identity?

Somewhere in the middle, if I’m being honest. I don’t know if [I] was doing it to reconnect with my identity. I would say, it was more searching for an identity. That is what feels honest to me. So much of my experience as an Asian American is searching for the spaces where I feel like I belong and searching for the reasons why I don’t feel like I belong, even in spaces where I feel like I should. For example, growing up in Fremont, California, [which] so much of the feature film [Dìdi (弟弟)] is about this. Growing up in a city that was majority Asian American, I grew up with a lot of Asian Americans. Not just one kind of [Asian ethnicity], but East Asian, South Asians, [and more] – even within that, Koreans, Vietnamese, Japanese, Filipino, Chinese, [and] Taiwanese kids. It was such a multicultural community. And, even though everyone looked like me and talked like me and shared similar cultures as me, I still didn’t feel like I fully belonged. That, to me, is my search for identity as an Asian American in a lot of ways. Making [these] movies weren’t necessarily trying to find an identity or reclaim an identity. It was just trying to define the feeling that I felt in trying to search for, something that feels honest, and see if other people feel similarly or don’t feel similarly or feel similarly but through a different context. The idea of belonging, especially in Asian Americans of my generation, is such an ambiguous feeling. The spaces that we do or don’t belong in, and how we define those for ourselves, is a constant search.

There’s this saying: “write what you know”. Your work has always touched on your connection to your family and yourself. 3000 Miles was about your time in New York, chronicled by messages from your mom. Still Here followed your grandmother’s former hometown and those who remained. H.A.G.S was a reflection of our youth. Nai Nai & Wai Po followed the joy and appreciation of your grandmothers. Even your feature film, Dìdi (弟弟), was based on your childhood. Were these the kinds of stories you wanted to tell when you dreamt of becoming a filmmaker? What sparked these stories to be told?

No. No. That’s a good question. Yeah, no. That’s a really interesting question because if I look back at the last six or seven years, all my films are personal and a lot of them are about my family. That wasn’t the intention. It wasn’t like I [am going to] make a trilogy of movies all about my family. I think what I’ve realized is that, as a filmmaker, what you’re really trying to do is mine the emotions in you and find a way to define it or translate it into filmmaking. That’s what filmmaking is. That’s all you really leave an audience with. If you do it well, if you’re lucky, you leave them with a feeling. You leave them with a memory. You leave them feeling moved, whether it’s laughter, crying, or there’s some emotion that you’re giving them. In my day-to-day life, when I feel something very deeply, my filmmaker brain is like ‘okay, what is this feeling? Why am I feeling it? What is making me feel so much of it?’ Anytime I feel something that much, I just try to mentally log it. There’s something very potent here. It’s making me feel a lot. If I can capture that emotion that I’m feeling and somehow translate it into a film, there’s a direct line of contact there. Oftentimes, when I feel that much of something, it’s always tied back to something that was about my family, whether that’s a curiosity or kind of like Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó [where] it was such a profound joy that was juxtaposed with a very visceral anger from what was happening in our world at the time to people like them. Anytime I feel so much emotion bottled up, it makes me think ‘there’s something here’. There’s something that’s making my heart just tick. Let’s look at it. Let’s dissect it. Is there something here and, oftentimes, that’s how these films end up happening. They just all happen to be about family because that’s what makes me feel the most joy, love, pain, anger, shame, and all of the emotions. 

You spent time with your grandmothers during the pandemic which inspired you to start documenting them. Did you learn something new about your grandmothers that you didn’t know before? How has your relationship changed with your grandmothers because of this documentary?

I lived with them. I was, probably, home for almost a year. I would spend maybe a month in Los Angeles every now and then, but I was living at home. When you are home and end up falling into these daily routines, it’s very easy to just live in the same space but not actually engage with the people around you. I can easily spend my whole day on the internet working on my own projects and they’re these peripheral elements in my life. It’s so easy to get lost. There’s so much noise in the world. What I really learned in this film was, just because you’re sharing space doesn’t mean time with somebody. It doesn’t mean being present with somebody. I’m guilty of that too. I like living at home and being lost in my own films and projects and work, then spending dinner eating with them, and then going back to my own thing. This film was a reminder to be present with one another and engage and listen to each other. I got to bring them into my world as a filmmaker. We got to really spend time with each other and create something together. It really was a collaboration with them. When I look at the movie now, I do see the skits and the heightened silly moments as almost like a grandson making a movie with his grandmothers that’s very charming, silly, and fun. But, I also see three humans coming together at a human level, and talk about something that is hard for grandmother and grandson to talk about. But, through the infrastructure of filmmaking, we got to really talk about it as humans — the pain of their lives, their childhoods, their histories. Stuff that, as a grandson, I want to know. It’s just something we don’t really talk about in our day-to-day lives. But, because we were able to connect on that level as humans, it bridged the gap between grandson and grandmother in a very deep way. It was special.

Having seen H.A.G.S., a story about reflecting on Sean Wang at 13-years-old, I was wondering what would 13-year old Sean Wang think of all this that has happened in his life?

I don’t know. I don’t even think he would have the language for it. I didn’t even know I wanted to be a filmmaker until I was in my late teens or early 20s. I knew I liked making stuff when I was 13. I spent years filming stuff and editing it without thinking it was filmmaking. If you told me that all this stuff’s gonna happen — directing your first feature film, I think 13-year-old Sean is going to be like ‘That’s cool, but why? Is that something I want to do?’ It was a gradual [journey]. He would be happy to hear that it all worked out. 

Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó is available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu.