Dìdi: growing up in the early 2000s.

As someone who lived through the transition from childhood to adolescence in the mid-2000s, I feel that generationally speaking I fell into a strange spot between millennials and zoomers. Although the transition from analog to digital had already been implemented in several aspects and the Internet was becoming more and more relevant in our daily lives, it was clear that we were halfway there, and, many times, keeping up was particularly complicated.

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I loved "Didi" because it is the first time that a coming of age story focuses precisely on this time, a time when Myspace and Facebook were still relevant, and if we wanted to chat with our friends we had to wait until we got home to check AOL or Hotmail Messenger.

And the fact is that although the film written, directed and produced by Sean Wang has a fairly generic starting point: the story of an immigrant boy who tries to confront the small challenges of being a teenager, finding our place socially speaking, and dealing with one or another family problem. What's truly refreshing is the execution: raw, honest and emotional, evoking early 2000s nostalgia through the music, costumes and even the constant display of rudimentary versions of online sites we used to visit.

Essentially, Didi addresses Chris Wang's search for identity, as we see him find new friends, fail and succeed in love, and try desperately to make his relationship with his mother and older sister work.

It's easy to find similarities with other coming of age stories like Bo Burnham's Eight Grade or Jonah Hills' gorgeous Mid90s, but I appreciate that he knows how to find the balance between the emotionality (Eight Grade) and aesthetic beauty (Mid90s) that they provide, while he finds his own identity.

Special mention to Izaac Wang, the boy protagonist who knows how to perfectly address all the emotions that the script demands, from the overwhelming nervousness of trying to give the first kiss and failing in the attempt, or the feeling that from one moment to the next those we considered friends are growing in a direction opposite to ours.

One of the best films I have seen in a year in which there has certainly been a lack of stories of this type: visually beautiful and moving. And, I love that it simultaneously feels so specific to the time in which it takes place, but that it has something for anyone to relate to. Its direction is brilliant, the script perfectly captures the way in which young people speak (or spoke), and its photography and general visual aspect give a very intimate finish to the final result.

Score taken from my Letterboxd account.