EUGENE, ORE. — The University of Oregon shone bright with cinematic passion on Thursday night as hundreds of students and faculty nestled into Lawrence 177 for a screening and Q&A with emerging Oscar-nominated director Sean Wang.
The “Dìdi (弟弟)” writer/director returned the following afternoon for a two-hour director’s masterclass, walking a select group of students through his creative process, breaking down scenes and spilling industry tea.
Presented by the Cinema Studies Department and hosted by Professor Michael Aronson, the two-day event was a part of the 10th Annual Harlan J. Strauss Visiting Filmmaker Series.
A product of Fremont, California, Wang began his career directing commercials at Google Creative Lab. His breakout short film, “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó,” premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival in 2023, gaining instant critical recognition. The short was later nominated for the grand prize, Best Documentary Short Film, at the 96th Academy Awards.
His feature directorial debut, 2024’s “Dìdi (弟弟),” exploded his intriguing rise to prominence, earning a smorgasbord of coveted honors including the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, and two Independent Spirit Awards. For young Ducks looking to burst onto the filmmaking scene, a live encounter with Wang presented an unmissable opportunity.
After a brief introduction, Thursday night’s festivities began with a screening of Wang’s 2021 short film “H.A.G.S.” — a snippet of his middle school years presented via old yearbook pages and retrospective phone calls. Dripping with nostalgia, confidence and personality, “H.A.G.S” explores the pitfalls of growing up as a child of immigrant parents — a natural progression into the tonally aligned “Dìdi (弟弟),” which screened immediately after.
One of the standout independent flicks of 2024, “Dìdi (弟弟)” tracks the life of Chris Wang, a 13-year-old Asian-American boy navigating social politics, girl trouble, MySpace and family drama in the summer of 2008. Wang stitches together an emotional rollercoaster of overwhelming awkwardness, relatable boyish struggles, friend group tomfoolery and code-switching. It is a painful reminder of our insecure intermediate years, and a warm love letter to the director’s hometown. Though not a memoir, “Dìdi (弟弟)” is sprinkled with Wang’s lived experiences.
Wang dissected the crux of the film, translating his young life into something relatable and digestible. “I developed a narrative muscle by the time we shot the movie,” Wang said. “I looked at real pieces of the world and my life, recontextualizing them in a way with rhythm, flow and narrative structure.”
Though broadly relatable on the surface, “Dìdi (弟弟)” dives into personal specificity, capturing the alienating sensation of Chris Wang’s experiences, tethered between Asian-American home life and the social expectations of American adolescence.
“I think that Asian-American writers, media and culture are starting to define that feeling of subtle ambivalence, of shame that Chris feels throughout the movie,” Wang said. “There’s nothing a 13-year-old boy is more scared of than his thoughts and stillness.”
Wang touched on the limitations he encountered as a first-time filmmaker: inexperience, minimal budget and untrained teenage actors. But for a film as quaint and personal as “Dìdi (弟弟),” such circumstances sometimes served as a blessing in disguise.
The film was shot entirely in Fremont, featuring homegrown actors plucked directly from their natural habitat. “The orthodontist in the movie is my real orthodontist,” Wang said. “There’s a lot of local pieces that I knew I could get for very cheap, or very free.”
In fact, Chris’s grandmother in the film is portrayed by Wang’s real-life grandmother.
To uphold that sense of raw authenticity and realness, Wang directed his teenage ensemble of first-time actors to improvise, using the script as a guide to capture a spontaneous, alive and documentary-like feel.
“I told them: forget everything you know about acting, and just be a kid,” Wang said. “Don’t try to talk to them like a thespian. Be a stupid, silly summer camp counselor.”
For UO freshman Ethan Yitzhaki, watching “Dìdi (弟弟)” and hearing from Wang was a cinematic experience like no other, laughing and learning alongside passionate peers. “This is why we make cinema,” Yitzhaki said. “This was my therapy.”
Friday’s masterclass provided an even deeper, exclusive descent into the making of the film and Wang’s technical progression, including a sneak peak into his time at the Sundance Directors Lab.
His assignment “World of Your Film” served as a loose guide to the DNA of “Dìdi (弟弟),” compiling clips from various works and Wang’s real-life that capture the essence of the then-upcoming project. “For my next movie, I’ll do this when I get bored and treat it as a Pinterest board,” Wang said.
Later, Wang broke down the anatomy of the film’s opening scene and showcased a strung-together rough draft made exclusively for the Sundance Directors Lab — the first time lead’s Izaac Wang and Shirley Chen worked together in person.
Finally, Wang discussed his “Dìdi (弟弟)” screenwriting process, which he constantly revisited for short stints at a time between various jobs. “When I would go off and do other things, I had a rod in my head, where if I saw something funny I would jot down notes,” Wang said. “By the time I went back to writing, I had a bunch of random notes and observations that could live in our movie.”
The big takeaway: it takes a village. A director’s vision is nothing without the mentorship and support of filmmakers at the next level.
For UO students, Wang is just that, offering students a clear, unfiltered look at what it takes to collaborate and build a personal film with limited resources. Not only is he an incredible filmmaker, but a warm, funny and down-to-earth presence.
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