Sean Wang Lives His ‘Fairy Story’ at Sundance

“I really feel like I’m in a fairy story,” Sean Wang stated to the sold-out crowd gathered on the Ray Theater in Park Metropolis, Utah, final month for his Sundance Movie Competition debut.

Mr. Wang, a 29-year-old filmmaker, was wearing a black swimsuit and white Vans (a nod to his skateboarding roots). He grabbed his chest in a present of how briskly his coronary heart was beating as he launched his movie, “Didi.” It’s a coming-of-age story about an angsty, insecure 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy looking for his place on the planet.

“I’m simply going to take just a few seconds to take this all in,” he stated earlier than snapping {a photograph} of the viewers. The nice and cozy crowd included Mr. Wang’s household and associates, the movie’s forged and crew, and a handful of potential patrons who’ve the facility to rework his station in life from aspiring filmmaker to bona fide Hollywood director.

It has occurred earlier than. Luminaries like Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, Damien Chazelle, Ava DuVernay and Lulu Wang all went from hopeful dreamers to precise filmmakers partly because of the Sundance Movie Competition, which simply concluded its fortieth 12 months.

Mr. Wang is conversant in that lineage and, it appears, has been making ready for his Sundance second since he found Spike Jonze’s skater movies as a teen earlier than heading off to movie faculty on the College of Southern California. Whereas engaged on and off for Google Inventive Lab, he made a sequence of quick movies that mined completely different elements of his childhood.

He additionally participated in a number of Sundance packages, together with one for filmmakers between the ages of 18 and 25, a screenwriters lab and a administrators lab. Every helped him hone his script, a private movie that each honors his relationship together with his mom and reimagines teen movies like “Stand By Me” and “Eighth Grade” by way of the lens of a first-generation American rising up within the cultural melting pot that was Fremont, Calif., in 2008. (Didi is Mandarin for little brother and a time period of endearment in Chinese language tradition.)

Now, after plodding away on his script for six years and ending the movie, Mr. Wang is taking his first steps into the highlight because of Sundance. The second coincided with promotion of his quick movie, “Nai Nai & Wài Pó,” about his two grandmothers. That movie was not too long ago nominated for an Oscar within the documentary quick class and can quickly develop into accessible on Disney+.

“It’s virtually an excessive amount of to completely course of,” he stated in an interview. “It’s actually thrilling, actually surreal, nerve-racking for certain, however total I really feel good.”

Mr. Wang has already overcome some unlikely odds. His movie was chosen from a pool of greater than 4,000 entries. And it landed in Sundance’s U.S. dramatic competitors, a class that has produced a slew of Oscar contenders, together with “CODA” and “Minari.”

Earlier than a movie might be an awards-season contender, although — or perhaps a movie that basic moviegoers can watch — it must discover a purchaser. And that’s what Mr. Wang hoped for at Sundance.

At a panel that includes first-time filmmakers, Mr. Wang commiserated with different newcomers about to unveil their motion pictures. Quite than speak enterprise, the administrators stored their concentrate on how they hoped audiences would react and the way they’d gotten their movies made, a lot of them mystified that it occurred in any respect.

“I’m going to get emotional if I speak an excessive amount of,” Mr. Wang stated when requested in regards to the individuals who stood by his facet in the course of the filmmaking course of. “I’m making an attempt to not cry greater than 10 instances at this competition.”

But underlying all that gratitude was a low-grade anxiousness: Would audiences and critics just like the movie, and would that be sufficient for a purchaser to scoop it up and plan to distribute it?

Earlier than the movie’s debut, Mr. Wang and his producers sequestered themselves in a makeshift inexperienced room. “Didi” contains a handful of first-time actors alongside extra seasoned veterans like Izaac Wang (“Good Boys”), who performs Didi, and Joan Chen (“The Final Emperor”), who performs his mom. The group selected to not display screen the movie for any patrons forward of time.

“We simply actually wish to honor this expertise and let the film converse for itself,” the producer Carlos López Estrada stated.

It was a call that each added to the strain of the second and in some way preserved the texture of the movie that Mr. Wang was determined to guard.

“This film must really feel community-driven, prefer it’s coming from the bottom up, and never from Hollywood coming into my hometown,” he stated. “We did it efficiently. My grandma might be in a film alongside this ageless actress, and all of it looks like the identical world as a result of we stored it at dwelling.”

The reception on the movie’s conclusion was raucous. The group gave the film an enthusiastic standing ovation, and Mr. Wang as soon as once more wiped away tears whereas he soaked all of it in.

Michelle Satter, the founding director of the Sundance Institute, was a part of the gang, cheering on her budding filmmaker simply as she had notable administrators together with Ryan Coogler (“Black Panther”) and Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”), who went from Sundance to the Oscars. Mr. Wang attended her administrators lab simply weeks earlier than he started manufacturing on “Didi,” utilizing the mountain setting in Utah to check out his two most complex scenes.

“Sean goes to have an unimaginable profession, and we completely imagine in him,” Ms. Satter stated earlier than Mr. Wang whisked her away to fulfill his household.

“Thanks for supporting Sean,” Cynthia Lee, Mr. Wang’s mom, stated tearfully to Ms. Satter. “As a mom, I admire you.”

Critiques began flooding in because the filmmaking group made its strategy to the after-party. The Hollywood Reporter known as “Didi” “touching,” whereas Selection deemed it “recent and humorous.” IndieWire wrote that it conjured “a way of time, place and texture that units the humorous, fleeting film other than the Sundance Competition coming-of-age movie pack.”

The social gathering was a lavish affair stuffed with Asian delicacies from the caterer Mama’s Evening Market. The band Hellogoodbye, which performs within the movie, performed on the social gathering, and Mr. Wang’s childhood bed room, which was used within the movie, was recreated within the foyer of the venue. The place was packed, and friends had been being turned away. Mr. Wang was mobbed by adoring followers and excited colleagues. Exterior Park Metropolis, he’s nonetheless an unknown. However inside that room on that night time, he was a famous person.

“The discoveries which are at Sundance this 12 months really feel very a lot akin to a few of the actually thrilling discoveries of filmmakers and movies from the previous 20 years,” stated Tom Quinn, the chief govt of the distributor Neon. “‘Didi’ matches that. It heralds the daybreak of this unimaginable new filmmaker.”

Including to the swirl of pleasure was Mr. Wang’s Oscar nomination for his documentary about his grandmothers. He flew again from Utah to observe the early-morning nominations announcement together with his household at his childhood dwelling. When “Nai Nai & Wài Pó” was introduced as the ultimate nominee within the quick movie class, Mr. Wang buried his head in his grandma’s lap then fell to the ground.

“I’ll by no means get used to this,” he stated later in an interview.

“Didi” ended up successful the celebrated Sundance viewers award, a prize that in years previous has gone to motion pictures like “CODA” and “Whiplash.”

On Wednesday, Mr. Wang was again in his condo in Los Angeles. The solar was shining and he was sporting a recent haircut when Focus Options introduced the acquisition of worldwide rights to “Didi,” which it is going to most likely launch this summer time in theaters, maybe as an antidote to the blockbusters that usually devour theaters at the moment.

It was an ending to a whirlwind journey that many aspiring filmmakers can solely dream about.

“There’s one thing about being in Park Metropolis, the place the entire issues that had been taking place to me didn’t really feel actual,” Mr. Wang stated. “You’re on this snow globe of a spot, and my consideration was wanted in so many locations, each single second of each single day. To be again after which the information, it looks like, ‘Oh, wow, we actually did that.’”