The Sundance Film Festival is often a place where indie hit and award-winning movies get their start, and the 2024 new movie Didi could be another example of both. After premiering at the 2024 edition of Sundance, the movie, the debut narrative feature for writer/director Sean Wang, is set to come to movie theaters this summer.
If you need some reminders of some recent Sundance successes, look no further than 2023, when Past Lives was a critical darling (including being named one of WTW's best movies of 2023) and earned a Best Picture nomination. Then you also had a box office hit in Talk to Me, which grossed more than $90 million worldwide at the box office. Can Didi have some similar success?
Before we find that out, here is everything that you need to know about Didi, including when it is releasing and who stars in it.
Didi release date
Focus Features acquired Didi after its Sundance premiere and has given the movie a July 26 release date exclusively in US movie theaters. It's not immediately clear if the movie will get a limited, platform release or be available everywhere in the US immediately. Also, at this time we don't have any info on UK or other international release dates.
Didi is just one of the notable 2024 Sundance movies coming to most movie theaters, as Kristen Stewart's Love Lies Bleeding has already done so and so will Jesse Eisenberg's A Real Pain later this year.
Didi cast
Didi is set to be a breakout role for its primary cast of Asian actors. Starring as the 13-year-old boy at the center of the movie is Izaac Wang, who has previously appeared in Good Boys, Raya and the Last Dragon, Clifford the Big Red Dog and The Santa Clauses TV series.
Joining him are Joan Chen (A Murder at the End of the World, Lust, Caution), Shirley Chen (Quiz Lady, The Resident) and Chang Li Hua, with Didi listed as her first credit on IMDb.
Didi plot
Didi revolves around a 13-year-old boy living in the Bay Area and details the funny, irreverent and effecting experiences of a first-generation Taiwanese American navigating the joy and chaos of adolescence.
Sean Wang wrote the screenplay, which is reportedly inspired by his own childhood.
Didi trailer
Watch the trailer for Didi, which features snippets from its positive reviews, right here:
Didi reviews
The reviews out of Sundance were strong, as Didi is rated "Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes with a score of 90% positive as of publication.
Who is Sean Wang?
As we mentioned, Sean Wang writes and directs Didi, his narrative feature movie debut. However, despite that, Wang is already an Oscar-nominated filmmaker, as his short documentary Nai Nai and Wài Pó was a 2024 Oscar-nominated short. He has a number of other shorts among his directing credits, as well as two full-length documentaries, Lady of the Harbour (2017) and A Marble Travelogue (2021).
