Give Me the Backstory: Get to Know Sean Wang, the Writer-Director of Ddi ()

By Lucy Spicer

One of the most exciting things about the Sundance Film Festival is having a front-row seat for the bright future of independent filmmaking. While we can learn a lot about the filmmakers from the 2024 Sundance Film Festival through the art that these storytellers share with us, there's always more we can learn about them as people. This year, we decided to get to the bottom of those artistic wells with our ongoing series: Give Me the Backstory!

For writer-director Sean Wang, the premiere of D di ( ) at the Sundance Film Festival represents a real full-circle moment. My first experience with Sundance was in 2019 when Carlos L pez Estrada invited me to work on his second feature film, Summertime, as a second unit director. Summertime premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, and getting to be there for the premiere was truly magical and wildly inspirational, says Wang. Four years later, Wang's own feature directorial debut - for which L pez Estrada served as producer - is screening in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.

Supported by the Sundance Ignite x Adobe Fellowship, Sundance Institute | The Asian American Foundation Fellowship, and the Institute's Directors and Screenwriters Labs, D di ( ) is a coming-of-age portrait of a 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy in the summer before high school. Set in the late 2000s, the film is sure to resonate with anyone whose formative years included the advent of social media, but many struggles that come with adolescence are universal. When asked how he wants people to feel after they see his film, Wang responds, I hope it brings back fond memories of their own childhoods and how cringe we all were at 13.

Below, discover how Wang got into filmmaking, his favorite part of making D di ( ), and why this story needs to be told now.

LINK:	https://www.sundance.org/blogs/give-me-the-backstory-get-to-know-sean-...
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