Sean Wang (‘Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó’ director) on documenting the ‘platonic sisterly bond’ between his grandmothers [Exclusive Video Interview]
“The word I keep coming back to to describe that moment is an extreme burst of chaotic energy,” shares filmmaker Sean Wang about the moment he received his first Oscar nomination for his documentary short film “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó.” The director watched the announcement live with the film’s stars — his grandmothers Yi Yan Fuei (Nǎi Nai) and Chang Li Hua (Wài Pó) — and filmed their reactions, sharing the utterly joyous moment of their celebration online. The nomination serves as a lovely grace note on the “extremely unexpected and surreal and special journey” that the family went on together. Watch our exclusive video interview above.
“Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó” is a 17-minute snapshot of the life that Wang’s two grandmothers have made for themselves in their old age; his Nǎi Nai is now 96, his Wài Pó 86. The two share a home and even a bed, take care of one another, and celebrate the joys of everyday life by dancing, singing and dressing up in fun outfits. The director had the impulse to capture their lives on film because he wanted to showcase the “unbridled joy” of being in the room with them when they are “being very silly and slapstick and humorous.”
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Wang’s doc balances those lighthearted moments with the “very mundane, quotidian rhythms of their life.” The short film features shots of the grandmothers reading the newspaper, washing the dishes, and performing other everyday tasks. The director describes the process of assembling the film as “so organic,” and he wanted to demonstrate that these two women are “so deep, they’re so human, they’re so complex, but they’re so silly and they’re so joyful and they’re so youthful.” He also hoped to document this moment in their life, especially because his paternal grandmother is older and “there are some days where I just felt how fragile she was as a human.” He adds, “Whenever I do move away again it could… every time I leave home could be the last time I see her, so I wanted to trap this moment in amber and really have a time capsule and a memory of all this to look back on.”
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Though Wang’s Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó seem inseparable, they didn’t always live together. As he explains, for most of his childhood, his Wài Pó “lived in Taiwan… Her primary purpose was a caretaker for my grandfather… he was paralyzed and bedridden for my entire life.” After his grandfather’s passing, the family moved her to the United States, where she and his Nǎi Nai struck up a connection because of their shared loss of their significant others. As their grandson succinctly notes, “They found late-stage soulmates” and a “platonic sisterly bond.”
Wang recently attended the Oscar nominees luncheon with Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó and says they “had a blast,” arriving on the red carpet in “stunning red outfits, sunglasses on” like “Hollywood A-listers.” At the luncheon, Wài Pó was “sitting at the same table as Hoyte van Hoytema,” the cinematographer of Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” and Wang laughs thinking that “she has no idea what a legend this guy is.” The young filmmaker was personally excited to meet fellow directors Greta Gerwig and Celine Song at the event, and recalls meeting Steven Spielberg, which he describes as a “very special” moment.
While “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó” competes at this year’s Academy Awards, Wang already has a project attracting buzz for 2025 with his feature film “Dìdi,” which just premiered at Sundance and won the Dramatic Audience Award. Attending the screening of his film at the fest was “the most special and the most nerve-wracking” experience, he says, though “the movie played really, really well” to the crowd. While his follow-up to his Oscar-nominated doc is about a “thirteen-year-old Taiwanese-American boy,” the filmmaker sees similarities between that project and “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó,” saying that if his short film “explores finding a new version of yourself at the end of your life, ‘Dìdi’ is about finding yourself and finding the ways you grow into a better version of yourself at the beginning of a new chapter of your life.”
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