“Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó”: Interview of Sean Wang, His Grandmothers

Where I’m From: Now and Gen options in-conversation items between generations — like a youthful girl and her grandmother — discussing a subject like magnificence rituals, funds, or marriage. We sat down with filmmaker Sean Wang and his grandmothers, Yi Yan Fuei and Chang Li Hua, the topics of Wang’s Oscar-nominated documentary quick, “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó.” Read their heartwarming chat about friendship under.

In 2021, within the wake of elevated anti-Asian violence and the continuing pandemic, filmmaker Sean Wang moved again house to San Francisco. There, he began observing — then filming — Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó, his 94-year-old paternal grandmother and 83-year-old maternal grandmother, respectively, who occur to be inseparable buddies and roommates. As he captured the mundane moments and joys of their every day lives, he created “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó,” an Oscar-nominated documentary quick that just lately landed on Disney+.

The Taiwanese American director — whose debut characteristic movie, “Dìdi,” just lately premiered on the 2024 Sundance Film Festival — primarily filmed a collection of house movies, which he become a phenomenal 17-minute “personal love letter” to his grandmothers. “As much as this movie is about my grandmothers and my relationship with them, it is about friendship, sisterhood, and the bonds that you maintain and water in old age,” he tells POPSUGAR. “I’m not 86, 96 years old. But I think [their friendship] is a good north star — hopefully, the friendships I have now that I feel are deeply special in my life, the ones that I know will last, that I hope could be Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó in our old age, are still as silly and vibrant and fun.”

Ahead of the 2024 Oscars, Wang and his grandmothers talk about their decades-long bond, the facility of friendship, and the life classes they’ve taught each other.

On Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó’s Unique Friendship

Chang Li Hua (Wài Pó): Us having the ability to spend our days collectively and reside collectively can be a kind of destiny and luck. Nǎi Nai is older than me by 10 years, so I’ve all the time seen her like my very own massive sister. I’m youthful than her by 10 years, so anytime I’m able to assist her and take care of her, I’ll do my greatest to take action. We have nearly all the identical hobbies. Reading the newspaper, exercising within the yard, going out for walks. Every day, we go to our orchard collectively to verify and see which tree has grown fruits. Every day, we eat fruits collectively, and we take the peels of vegetables and fruit to the yard and make fertilizer.

Yi Yan Fuei (Nǎi Nai): [Wài Pó and I] have the identical perspective. We each love buddies, we like to train, and we like to learn the information, so we’re capable of be collectively harmoniously, similar to sisters. Sean is aware of too. He grew to become shut with us, and I cherish the time we spent collectively day by day.

Sean Wang: They’re my grandmothers. And as their kind of mischievous, younger filmmaker grandson, I believe our relationship is one of such pleasure, silliness, and this childlike, youthful vitality. They point out it within the movie that I convey it out of them, however in addition they convey it out of me. I believe that ends in some enjoyable collaborations and these foolish movies that we make. Quite a bit of these had been the seeds that grew to become one half of “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó.” The silliness, the chaotic pleasure, I wish to name it, that balances out of with the extra poignant, deeply human grounded pains of their lives.

On What They Learned About Each Other Throughout Filming

Sean Wang: I believe I knew all of the broad strokes of their lives, however getting to essentially speak to them about their childhoods and their lives earlier than they had been my grandmothers was actually enlightening. But reducing to current day — and perhaps I all the time knew this — I discovered simply how a lot of these inventive spirits they’re.

So a lot of this movie was only a option to give them a platform that I believe no person had ever actually thought of them for. They dance, play, and permit their silliness to take heart stage. And now that they are going to the Oscars and being enveloped on this world that’s full of spectacle and fancy attire, they’re actually loving it and getting to specific a muscle that they so clearly have, that nobody has ever allowed them to flex.

Yi Yan Fuei (Nǎi Nai): Sean was very approachable with us previous individuals. He did not deal with us as previous individuals in any respect. He joked with us day by day. He did not even act like we had been dozens of years older than him. We had been very completely satisfied having enjoyable collectively.

Chang Li Hua (Wài Pó): I discovered that Sean was very proficient — he has an ideal imaginative and prescient. Also, he was very affected person with us after we had been filming the film. He would educate us how one can pose. He’s a child who loves to show his buddies. He’s ready to hang around with previous individuals, kids, or buddies of the identical age. He’s a younger man with a vigorous persona, but additionally works very laborious.

On the Life Lessons They’ve Taught Each Other

Sean Wang: There’s a line within the film that Nǎi Nai says that has actually caught with me. She says, “The days we spend feeling joy and the days we spend feeling pain are the same days spent, so I’m going to choose joy.” I believe that quite simple resolution is a robust one: selecting pleasure. Especially for somebody like her who’s within the twilight years of her life, figuring out that her days are extra restricted than mine. In our dumpster hearth of a world at occasions, permitting your self to decide on pleasure and rejoice the individuals round you is a worthy resolution.

Yi Yan Fuei (Nǎi Nai): This younger child can get alongside so properly with others. He does not deal with us like previous individuals; he nonetheless shouts like us younger individuals in entrance of us day by day. When he is right here, now we have a really completely satisfied life. We must be like him, whether or not he is younger or previous. He is our buddy.

Chang Li Hua (Wài Pó): He helped us study we’re not ineffective after we are previous. We can nonetheless be helpful individuals after we are previous. We can nonetheless dance, make films, and be actors. Old individuals mustn’t underestimate themselves. The aged are additionally succesful of doing so many issues.

This interview has been translated, edited, and condensed for readability.

Yerin Kim is the options editor at POPSUGAR, the place she helps form the imaginative and prescient for particular options and packages throughout the community. A graduate of Syracuse University’s Newhouse School, she has over 5 years of expertise within the popular culture and girls’s way of life areas. She’s obsessed with spreading cultural sensitivity by way of the lenses of way of life, leisure, and magnificence.