In 2008, during the last month of summer before high school begins, an impressionable 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy learns what his family can’t teach him: how to skate, how to flirt, and how to love your mom.
“DÌDI (弟弟) means ‘little brother’ in Mandarin. However, it is also an endearing term many Chinese parents call their younger sons: the very same words my mother used to call me,” says director Sean Wang. “DÌDI is everything I want to say now about everything I experienced then. It is an ode to the joy and chaos of adolescence, it is a thank you, I’m sorry, and I love you to the immigrant mothers that raise us, and it is an examination of how it feels to learn to love yourself during a time when the world says you are unworthy of it. But more than anything, it is the movie I know my younger self would have loved to see: a coming-of-age movie set in a place I know, starring people who look like those I knew, during a moment when we are the worst versions of ourselves having the best time of our lives.”
For the film’s effervescent score, Wang reunited with Giosuè Greco, his composer for 2023’s NǍI NAI & WÀI PÓ (nominee for Best Documentary Short Film at the 96th Academy Awards). Featuring contributions from Stephen Pfeifer on contrabass and Chase Jackson on vibraphone, DÌDI’s stirring score received rave reviews on the film’s way to the Audience Award at Sundance 2024.
Art direction, product design and layout for DÌDI were provided by Josh Manderville, with creative direction & A&R by Chelsea Taylor and label management by Cameron Dean.
