''Dìdi'' () is a 2024 American

coming-of-age Coming of age is a young person's transition from being a child to being an adult. The specific age at which this transition takes place varies between societies, as does the nature of the change. It can be a simple legal convention or can b ...

comedy drama Comedy drama (also known by the portmanteau dramedy) is a hybrid genre of works that combine elements of comedy and Drama (film and television), drama. In film, as well as scripted television series, serious dramatic subjects (such as death, il ...

film, written, directed, and produced by Sean Wang in his directorial debut. The film stars Izaac Wang and

Joan Chen Joan Chen (simplified Chinese; 陈冲; born April 26, 1961) is an American actress and film director. She made her film debut in the Chinese film ''Youth'' (1977) before starring in the film (1979). She came to the attention of American audien ...

Carlos López Estrada Carlos López Estrada (born September 12, 1988) is a Mexican-American filmmaker, music video director, commercial director, theatre director, and actor. Born in Mexico, he moved to the United States when he was 12 and later enrolled at Chapman ...

, Josh Peters, Valerie Bush and Chris Columbus serve as producers and executive producers under their AntiGravity Academy, Spark Features and Maiden Voyage Pictures banners, respectively. The film portrays Chris, a Taiwanese-American eighth grader (Wang) at the dawn of

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

. Chris regularly uses social media to escape from his underwhelming childhood and overburdened mother (Chen), but the Internet also accentuates his preexisting feelings of

internalized racism In social justice studies, internalized racism is a form of internalized oppression, defined by sociologist Karen D. Pyke as the " internalization of racial oppression by the racially subordinated." In her study ''The Psychology of Racism, '' Robi ...

and personal inadequacy. ''Dìdi'' had its world premiere at the

2024 Sundance Film Festival The 2024 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 18 to 28, 2024. The first lineup of competition films was announced on December 6, 2023. Among the highlighted events included the premiere of a documentary about the 1980s rock band Dev ...

on January 19, 2024, where it won the Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic and U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award: Ensemble. It was released in the United States by

Focus Features Focus Features LLC is an American independent film production and distribution company, owned by Comcast as a unit of Universal Pictures, which is itself a unit of Comcast's division NBCUniversal. Focus Features distributes independent and fore ...

on July 26, 2024. It received positive reviews and was named one of the top 10 independent films of 2024 by the

National Board of Review The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures is a non-profit organization of New York City area film enthusiasts. Its awards, which are announced in early December, are considered the first major harbinger of the film awards season that ...

Plot

In the summer of 2008, 13-year-old Chris Wang (often called ''Dì Di'') lives in a middle-class neighborhood of

Fremont, California Fremont () is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. Located in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, Bay Area, Fremont has a population of 230,504 as of 2020, making it the fourth List of cities and towns in the San F ...

, with his Taiwanese immigrant mother Chungsing, her demanding mother-in-law Nǎi Nai, and his older sister Vivian. Chris rarely sees his father, who has moved back to Taiwan for work and supports the family in America with

remittances A remittance is a non-commercial transfer of money by a foreign worker, a member of a diaspora community, or a citizen with familial ties abroad, for household income in their home country or homeland. Money sent home by migrants competes ...

. Chris constantly bickers with Vivian, who is about to leave for

UC San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Sc ...

. He is not one of the popular kids at school. He makes silly

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

videos with best friends Fahad and Soup, which incorporate a great deal of juvenile humor. Chris's behavior and feelings of inadequacy begin to strain his relationships. Chris uses

AIM AIM or Aim may refer to: Computing * AIM alliance, an Apple-IBM-Motorola alliance * AIM (software), AOL Instant Messenger * Fortyfive, a Japanese software development company previously known as AIM Military * Abrams Integrated Management, an ...

and

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

to strike up a friendship with his crush, the half-Asian Madi. When they go on a date, she reveals

and tells Chris he is attractive "for an Asian." She tries to initiate a sexual encounter, but Chris is too nervous to continue. Although Madi tries to reach out after the incident, he is too embarrassed to speak to her and blocks her on AIM. During a group hangout with Fahad, Chris disgusts Fahad's African-American crush by cracking a casually misogynistic joke and luridly describing how he and Fahad once fooled around with a dead squirrel. Fahad decides to distance himself from Chris, lest his crush realize that Fahad's sense of humor is similarly immature. When Fahad demotes him from his "top eight friends" list on

MySpace Myspace (formerly stylized as MySpace, currently myspace; and sometimes my␣, with an elongated Whitespace character#Substitute images, open box symbol) is a social networking service based in the United States. Launched on August 1, 2003, it w ...

, Chris is devastated. Chris begins to realize that his mother is under great stress. Chungsing and Chris have dinner with another Taiwanese mother and her son, Max. The mother makes Chungsing ashamed that Vivian did not get into

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

. Chungsing criticizes Chris' academics in front of Max, hoping the humiliation will motivate him to study harder. At the mother's suggestion, Chungsing sends Chris to a

cram school A cram school (colloquially: crammer, test prep, tuition center, or exam factory) is a specialized school that trains its students to achieve particular goals, most commonly to pass the entrance examinations of high schools or university, univer ...

, where Max's friend Josh ruthlessly bullies him. In addition, although Nǎi Nai is warm and grandmotherly to Chris, she harshly criticizes Chungsing's parenting and negatively compares her to her absent son. Chris overhears Chungsing lose her temper and threaten to send Nǎi Nai back to Taiwan. Finally, Chungsing is disappointed when a local painting competition rejects her submission. Chris sees an opportunity to become cool when a trio of older skateboarders recruit him to film highlight reels for them. Still smarting from Madi's comment that he is cute for an Asian, he tells the skateboarders (who are white and African-American) that he is half-Asian. They take him to a party where he tries alcohol and marijuana; when he gets sick, Vivian covers for him. He reconciles with Vivian before she leaves for college. The skateboarders visit Chris's home and find his footage unusable. Chungsing, unaware of Chris' deception, greets the skateboarders and reveals that Chris is not half-Asian. Chris angrily berates his mother to get her to leave. The other boys are shocked to see Chris treat his mother rudely, and leave in disapproval. At cram school, Chris hits Josh after Josh mocks him for his failed date with Madi and is nearly expelled. In the car back home, Chris yells at Chungsing, calling her a failed artist who does not contribute to the family. Chungsing bitterly responds that Chris is an embarrassment to the family and that she might have been a successful painter if Vivian and Chris had never been born. Chris runs away from home for a night. When Chris returns home, Chungsing conciliates him by recounting how Vivian also ran away from home for 3 days when she was 14 and that as much as she likes to paint, her children are her true dream. On the first day of high school, Chris attempts to reconcile with Madi after months of ignoring her. She rebuffs him, citing that he beat up her friend Josh. He joins a club for visual arts, and Fahad nods hello when Chris greets him. Chungsing picks up Chris from school, and he tells her about his day.

Cast

Production

Principal photography Principal photography is the phase of producing a film or television show in which the bulk of shooting takes place, as distinct from the phases of pre-production and post-production. Personnel Besides the main film personnel, such as the ...

took place in July 2023 in

. The film consists mostly of first-time actors from the Bay Area. The film was previously selected for the 2023

Sundance Institute Sundance Institute is a non-profit organization founded by actor Robert Redford committed to the growth of independent artists. The institute is driven by its programs that discover and support independent filmmakers, theatre artists and compo ...

Screenwriting & Directors Lab and the 2022 SFFILM Rainin Grant.

Music

The

film score A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to ...

was composed by Giosuè Greco, who also scored Wang's '' Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó'' (2023). The score was released digitally on July 26, 2024, through

Back Lot Music The human back, also called the dorsum (: dorsa), is the large posterior area of the human body, rising from the top of the buttocks to the back of the neck. It is the surface of the body opposite from the chest and the abdomen. The vertebral c ...

, and on vinyl five days later through Mondo. The film also includes a number of songs from the 2000s;

music supervisor A music supervisor is a person who combines music and visual media. According to the Guild of Music Supervisors, a music supervisor is “a qualified professional who oversees all music related aspects of film, television, advertising, video game ...

Toko Nagata drew from the

pop punk Pop-punk (also punk-pop, alternatively spelled without the hyphen) is a rock music fusion genre that combines elements of punk rock with power pop or pop music, pop. It is defined by its fast-paced, energetic tempos, and emphasis on classic pop s ...

and hip hop music that was popular in that time period. Nagata received permission from

Future Islands Future Islands is an American synth-pop band based in Baltimore, Maryland, comprising Gerrit Welmers (keyboards and programming), William Cashion (bass, acoustic and electric guitars), Samuel T. Herring (lyrics and vocals), and Michael Lowry (pe ...

to use one of their albums, but Wang vetoed it as its inclusion would have been anachronistic with the film's mid-2008 setting. The film features "Touchdown Turnaround (Don’t Give Up on Me)" by

Hellogoodbye Hellogoodbye (sometimes styled as hellogoodbye) is an American pop rock band that was formed in Huntington Beach, California in 2001 by singer Forrest Kline. They were signed to Drive-Thru Records and released their first full-length album '' ...

used as a ringtone.

Motion City Soundtrack Motion City Soundtrack is an American Rock music, rock band formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1997. The band's line-up consists of vocalist and guitarist Justin Pierre, lead guitarist Joshua Cain, keyboardist Jesse Johnson, bassist Matthew Ta ...

wrote "Stop Talking", their first new song in over a decade, for the film's closing credits; they got in touch after Wang's Instagram story about their performance at the When We Were Young festival. The single was released digitally on August 8, 2024, and was also released on

7-inch vinyl In music, a single is a type of release of a song recording of fewer tracks than an album ( LP), typically one or two tracks. A single can be released for sale to the public in a variety of physical or digital formats. Singles may be standal ...

; its music video was also directed by Wang and features actors from ''Dìdi'' in character filming a YouTube video on a camcorder.

Release

''Dìdi'' had its world premiere at the

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with 423,234 combined in-person and online viewership in 2023. The festival has acted ...

on January 19, 2024. A few days later,

acquired distribution rights to the film. It also screened at

South by Southwest South by Southwest (SXSW) is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas. It began in 1987 and has conti ...

on March 12, 2024, and had its international premiere at the

Beijing International Film Festival The Beijing International Film Festival (), abbreviated BJIFF, is a film festival in Beijing, China. Founded in 2011, along with the Shanghai International Film Festival, it is one of China's two biggest film festivals. The festival is one of ...

on April 19, 2024. It closed the 11th edition of Sundance London on June 9, 2024. It began a

limited theatrical release __FORCETOC__ Limited theatrical release is a film distribution strategy of releasing a new film in a few cinemas across a country, typically art house theaters in major metropolitan markets. Since 1994, a limited theatrical release in the Unite ...

in the United States on July 26, 2024, followed by a

wide release In the motion picture industry, a wide release (short for nationwide release) is a film playing at the same time at cinemas in most markets across a country. This is in contrast to the formerly common practice of a roadshow theatrical release in ...

on August 16.

Home media

The film was available for premium digital rental and sale on September 3, 2024, and was released on Blu-ray on October 29, 2024.

Reception

Critical reception

In her review for ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'', Adrian Horton described ''Dìdi'' as "easily one of the best, most seamless films he'sseen on the experience of growing up online" and declared that it has a "clear antecedent" in '' Eighth Grade'' (2018).

Bob Mondello Bob Mondello (born 1949) is an American film critic. Annually, Mondello sees over 300 films, commenting on them on radio, in print, and in speaking engagements at film clubs and public radio presentations. Career Mondello spent more than a decade ...

NPR National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...

wrote that the film "has plenty to say about social media changes and cultural identity, and ends up feeling a lot like its pintsized hero – cute, charming, exasperating, promising." Filmmakers

Karyn Kusama Karyn Kiyoko Kusama (born March 21, 1968) is an American filmmaker. She made her feature directorial debut with the sports drama film ''Girlfight'' (2000), for which she won Best Director and the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival an ...

, Dana Ledoux Miller and Lance Oppenheim all cited ''Dìdi'' as among their favorite films of 2024, with Miller saying "Not only do Joan Chen and Sean Wang have the most adorable filmmaking meet-cute of all time, they've crafted something truly special together. Here's hoping this is the first of many collaborations between them."

Accolades

Notes

References

External links

* {{Sundance Audience Award Dramatic 2020s coming-of-age comedy-drama films 2020s English-language films 2020s Mandarin-language films 2020s teen comedy-drama films 2024 directorial debut films 2024 independent films American coming-of-age comedy-drama films American independent films American teen comedy-drama films Chinese-language American films Comedy-drama films about Asian Americans English-language comedy-drama films English-language independent films Films about dysfunctional families Films about mother–son relationships Films about puberty Films about siblings Films about social media Films about Taiwanese Americans Films set in the San Francisco Bay Area Films set in 2008 Focus Features films Semi-autobiographical films Sundance Film Festival award–winning films