Finding your way as a teenager can be brutal. A whirlwind of big emotions and desires is difficult to understand, let alone communicate. The need for social approval can feel extremely urgent, even if it means being untrue to yourself. And the adults raising you never seem to get it. What should a child do?

Filmmaker Sean Wang delves deep into these growing pains in his debut film Didian emotional sequel to his Oscar-nominated short documentary Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó. Wang’s coming-of-age story, in theaters now, centers on the inner world of Chris (Izaac Wang), a 13-year-old Taiwanese-American boy growing up in the Bay Area suburb of Fremont in the late 2000s. Chris regularly bickers with his older sister and lives with two loving matriarchs — his mother, Chungsing (Joan Chen), and his Nǎi Nai (paternal grandmother, played by Chang Li Hua), both of whom immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan. In his free time, he films the neighborhood pranks he and his friends get up to for his YouTube channel. But he also longs to fit in; the film beautifully captures the nuances of navigating a first-generation child in a culture unknown to the adults raising him.

The script took shape when Wang was 22, though he attributes his creative streak to an “existential crisis” at 26. “That was the age when my parents both emigrated to America. For the first time, I had a direct connection to my parents’ experiences,” he says. “They didn’t speak the language, had no friends, and were hoping for the best. It felt wild and made me empathize with what they were experiencing – and that was while we were trying to raise two more or less American children in America. The older we get, the bigger the gap becomes.”

But Wang’s hope for what comes next is clear: that Didi inspires a new generation of storytellers. “Hopefully in 10, 20 years, this film won’t be an isolated case and there will be a lot of coming-of-age films about Asian-American kids and the different experiences they have.” And Wang adds: “Shoutout to my mom.”

B We spoke to the director about how he views his parents with more empathy, how he brings the AOL era back to life on screen, and what advice he has for aspiring filmmakers who want to tell their own coming-of-age story.

Fremont plays a big role in the film. Have your feelings about your hometown changed as an adult compared to when you were a child?

Yes, absolutely. A lot of the things I saw as negative – like growing up in a suburb that I thought was boring and mundane at the time – made it so fun. My friends and I got together and did what we wanted and created our own fun.

The Bay Area is diverse, but Fremont in particular is a deeply rooted immigrant community. I went to my best friend’s house and had homemade Korean food and then a really amazing homemade Pakistani dinner at my other best friend’s house. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized how special and unique it is to grow up in such a multicultural community. Now I’m really grateful for it.

So much of Didi feels anchored in the angst of teenagers and the dynamic between Chris and his mother. There is a specific sadness and a feeling of isolation. I think many first generation children only recognize or process their parents’ experiences in a new country when they are adults. Are these kinds of themes and meditations important to you when working on Didi?

Absolutely. There was a lot of life in this film that influenced the art. When you grow up, you only know what you know. You don’t grow up like oh, my immigrant parents…that’s just the world you’re born into. Then you start to think: what is my context and what is the context of the generations before me?

It was cool to experience the nostalgia of the early 2000s in Didilike seeing a character scouring the old-fashioned Myspace profile of a loved one, being hurt by a friend’s top 8, or hearing the sound of AIM messenger.

The film is set in 2008 because I was 13 at the time. The internet was such a big part of our lives, but it wasn’t our whole life. I thought about the movies I loved, like Stand by Me And The sandbank and that’s what I did with my friends back then – just running around outside and hanging out until the sun went down. But it was fun to incorporate all that internet language into our film in a way that didn’t feel gimmicky, but was just part of the story.

Many Asians from different walks of life, and especially Asian boys and men, have shared how they felt while watching Didi. Do you have any advice for aspiring filmmakers who, after watching the film, feel inspired to tell their own story?

I would say look within. There is so much noise in the world today with Instagram, the internet and everything that is coming at you all at once. The exercise I had to do for myself with this film was to try to make it more personal. A lot of people ask me what advice I would give to Asian American filmmakers… but you are also a filmmaker, you are not just an Asian American filmmaker. A lot of people said: How did you implement the Asian elements of this film? Just think about your own life experience. The things that are closest to you are the things you know best. All of that is a resource for a director and filmmaker.

Bringing a film to the screen is a huge achievement. What aspect of this experience are you most proud of?

I am really proud of the number of people who worked on this film for whom it was also their first feature film experience. For my producers Carlos López Estrada and Valerie Bush, it was their first film as producers. It was my first film as a screenwriter and director. For my cinematographer, who I have worked with for ten years, it was his first feature film. My editor, who edited the film Miss The film takes place almost entirely online and was her first live-action film. For the casting director, it was her first time casting for a feature film.

People might advise us against it, but I felt strongly that these people were the right people for the job. We didn’t hire them based on their resume. And a lot of the energy and excitement we had from never having made a feature film before went into this film – not necessarily that we knew how to do it “right” because we’d never done it before, but we trusted it when it felt right to us. That kind of naivety was an advantage.