“Dìdi,” the semi-autobiographical debut from director, writer and producer Sean Wang, delivers just that. It follows 13-year-old Chris Wang, or “Wang Wang,” as his friends call him, during the summer between middle and high school. His family, who affectionately call him Dìdi, Mandarin for “little brother,” are Taiwanese Americans living in Fremont, California, in 2008 — something viewers could likely pick up on even quickly with the use of flip phones, instant messaging and Myspace throughout.

At the core of this story of a young boy wanting to fit in, navigating his first crush and feeling the ebbs and flows of young friendships is his mother, the only person who sees him for who he is. As many 13-year-old boys feel at times, Chris just finds his mom, beautifully played by Joan Chen, to be unbearably irritating and embarrassing.

Throughout the well-paced story, Chris grapples with wanting to push away those closest to him, saying cruel things that can’t be unsaid, and simultaneously wanting their approval and love more than ever before.

In a wistful moment, after Chris and his mom, Chungsing, have cooled down from a big fight, Chris asks her if she’s ashamed of him. Through a poignant monologue, Chungsing tells him she could never be ashamed of him and that he is her dream. It’s a sweet moment and a sweet thought, but it also hits on a pressure many children of immigrants feel: to live up to their parents’ wildest dreams.

Izaac Wang, a revelation as Chris, seamlessly portrays those feelings of pressure and fear of disappointing family. His performance makes you appreciate that fraught time on the cusp of high school for what it taught you, but it also makes you appreciate that it’s over.

For all the emotional punches he packs as we follow Chris’ journey, Wang is also effortlessly hilarious in the film’s lighter moments.

From searching “how to kiss” on YouTube to fretting over how to respond to his crush’s IMs with his buddies, Wang pulls you in right away and doesn’t let go.

“Dìdi” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, winning the audience award and a special jury award for its ensemble. It was one of the festival’s biggest discoveries and it was praised at the time for how it fostered nostalgia for the aughts — although many millennial viewers were shaken by the idea of a film set in 2008 being a period piece.

Creating something that feels nostalgic or captures a moment in time is no easy task, but the film pulls it off, largely thanks to the stellar performances. Several of the teen characters are played by first-time actors, which creates a palpable authenticity. The young actors also, refreshingly, don’t look far off from 13 in a departure from many films with teen characters that cast older actors.

That realness is already there, given that Wang infused much of his childhood into the story and filmed on location in his hometown. He also cast his own 86-year-old grandmother as the endearing Nai Nai, who delivers comedic relief as if she was a veteran actor.

In a memorable scene, and a glimpse at Chris’ soft spot for his grandmother, he films her to feed his hobby of creating YouTube videos. As he gets closer to her face with the camera, she says she’s ugly and he responds that she is beautiful, and they exchange “I love yous.” It’s a quick yet moving reminder that under the layers of angst and the uncertainty that comes with times of transition, Chris is just a kid who loves his family and wants to do right by them. And then the moment is over.

“Dìdi’s” greatest strength lies in the balance it strikes between moments of levity and gravity, often prompting waves of laughter seconds after evoking tears.

Several shots throughout the film show Chungsing affectionately staring at her son, waiting for him to acknowledge her to no avail. Once Chris has experienced more of the messiness that is being 13, he doesn’t just look back at her. He finally sees her.

“Dìdi” simply makes you wish you could turn back time and hug your mom.

“Dìdi,” a Focus Features release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “language throughout, sexual material, and drug and alcohol use — all involving teens.” Running time: 93 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

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Readers may remember the July 4, 2023 release, “The Sound of Freedom,” which aimed to expose the human trafficking crisis. 

Exactly one year later on this past July 4, Angel Studios released “The Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot.” The film addresses the needs of children in the foster care system. Although the storyline of the two films is unrelated, they share a powerful message of mercy.  

At one point in “Sound of Hope,” protagonist Donna Martin holds her foster daughter close and says, “You are a gift and you were only ever meant to be loved.” When life gets rocky (as it certainly does for the many families in the film!), we are all called to place our hope in the one unchanging constant – the unconditional love of God.

“The Sound of Hope” tells the compelling true story of Reverend W.C. and Donna Martin as they pave the way for their rural parish in East Texas to take in 77 children from the foster care system. Ultimately, their witness and example empties the system of every child needing placement within the surrounding 100 miles. 

The film has to teeter a delicate balance between depicting the grittiness of the victims’ struggles without completely scandalizing the viewers. While the movie is overall successful at this, more sensitive viewers may still find certain scenes to be too intense. Other viewers, who may have had first-hand experiences similar to those in the film, may feel like the sufferings and challenges were not depicted strongly enough. 

Overall, “The Sound of Hope” is a well-done film that invites Christians to reflect on the human suffering around them and the need for faith to take action.

There are two layers of themes in the film. At face value, it tells the compelling story of children who “no one else wanted,” but who are welcomed with loving arms into a community of faith. The messiness of family life and the challenges of unconditional love are on full display. Those who have a heart for children in the foster care system will appreciate the attention that this film draws to the foster care needs in the US, which are rarely discussed and all too quickly forgotten. 

On the deeper, more universal level this story powerfully resounds with themes of mercy and the Parable of the Lost Sheep. The children in the foster care system are abandoned, neglected, and desperately in need of love. Just as there is nothing they can do to earn or deserve the love of a family, there is nothing we can do to earn the love of the Father. 

The church community in Possum Trot is a powerful analogy for the mercy of the Father who greets each one of us with open arms. In the film, when a foster child is brought into the church for the first time the whole community cheers and welcomes him saying, “The Lord heard you.” 

In one particularly moving scene, the young boy arrives at his foster family’s home for the first time. His sister waits in the car, hesitantly, but he runs straight to the father who scoops him up in a warm embrace. Although many of us cannot relate to the trauma of being without a home in the foster care system, we can all relate to the human need for belonging and the universal need for God’s fatherly love.

Raye Zaragoza was just a child when she first auditioned to play Tiger Lily. It was the late ’90s, yet another “Peter Pan” project was in the works, and though most adaptations had presented Tiger Lily as an offensive caricature, maybe this one would offer a dimensional, dignified depiction of a Native American.

“The only thing I had to do in the audition was giggle at the Lost Boys,” she recalled. In most “Peter Pan” retellings, “her part is so small, and in an incredibly cringe, stereotypical scene that’s a white perspective of what a Native person would be, and it isn’t even based on real language or dance or culture or anything. She’s the only Indigenous character in the story, and yet she’s almost like a mascot.”

Zaragoza — who is of Akimel O’odham, Mexican, Japanese and Taiwanese descent — was relieved she didn’t get that role. But more than 20 years later, she’s originating a fresh take on Tiger Lily in the “Peter Pan” national tour, now playing at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre through Sunday, followed by Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center for the Arts (Aug. 6 to 18). The musical is a restructuring of Jerome Robbins’ stage show and maintains most of its beloved score, composed by Morris Charlap with additional music by Jule Styne and additional lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green.

This production features a new book by Larissa FastHorse that better represents its Native characters, and with Native American actors in the cast, a piece that previously caused harm to Indigenous peoples is now a platform for Native artists. Negotiations are underway to make this version the one that’s available for licensing by theaters and schools moving forward.

“I really don’t think those writers meant any harm, but we just were so asleep as to harming people and it’s amazing how long it took us to wake up,” the new production’s director, Lonny Price, said of the original text. In updating the book, “we didn’t want to be preachy or stand on a soapbox, but we wanted to be fair and equitable to the different cultures we’re representing.”

“Oftentimes, ‘Peter Pan’ is the first big professional stage show a child might see,” he added. “It’s important that all children can enjoy it, that they can not only fall in love with ‘Peter Pan’ but also the theater itself. And if we can get some of those kids to say, ‘I want to see another one of those,’ then we’ve won on so many levels.”

Producers approached FastHorse in early 2022 about rewriting the musical, itself an adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s 1904 play and 1911 novelization. While beloved for generations — after its debut in 1954, the musical was filmed for NBC three times and repeatedly revived on Broadway — it referred to Neverland’s Indians as “redskins” and included “Ugg-a-Wugg,” a percussive dance number with gibberish lyrics and a silly tone. (Schools have individually tweaked the text or outright canceled shows over this problematic material.)

FastHorse — a dual citizen of the Sicangu Lakota Nation and the U.S., a MacArthur grant recipient and the first known female Native American writer of a play produced on Broadway — initially resisted the gig.

“I was scared, because this show could end my career,” she said. “I’m Native American, I still have to be able to go home and work in my community, and I also didn’t want to do wrong by the ‘Peter Pan’ folks either. But the producers gave me so much freedom and latitude, and despite my initial hesitancy, I’m glad I did it. I’m really proud of it.”

The musical’s source material calls the tribe “piccaninny warriors” and phrases their few lines in broken English. In this production, the tribe is made up of various Indigenous peoples from all over the world, each individual the last of their respective tribes and living in Neverland with hopes of returning home someday.

“In Neverland, you don’t grow old, you can basically live forever, so you can also preserve your culture,” said swing, co-fly captain and dance captain Bailey Frankenberg, a Cherokee Nation tribal member and a Choctaw Nation descendant. “It’s a really special way to take the lore of this magical place that already exists, and use it in a way that is helpful for how we can be perceived in this piece.”

The cast collaborated with FastHorse and costume designer Sarafina Bush to envision the Indigenous characters’ names, extinct tribes and onstage clothing, inspired by each of the actors’ ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Their characters’ names and tribes are listed in the show’s program, and FastHorse’s script requests that future stagings do the same with their performers.

“Let’s be honest, there’ll be towns that don’t have a dozen Native people who can do musical theater,” said FastHorse. “So every person in our tribe plays a version of themselves. They’re from extinct tribes from Mexico or South America or Japan; because we have one white girl in the ensemble, she’s from Eastern Europe, so she’s from an ancient Slavic tribe. This means that, going forward, no one ever has to play redface.”

Nolan Almeida, left, as Peter Pan, Kenny Ramos as Acoma, Raye Zaragoza as Tiger Lily and the rest of the “Peter Pan” cast.

(Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade)

Neverland’s Indigenous people are led by the new Tiger Lily, a warrior princess who tells jokes, sings, dances and fights, all just as well as Peter, her friendly foe. “Peter Pan says, ‘I’m having fun adventuring all day,’ and a big part of that is facing off with Tiger Lily and her tribe,” FastHorse explained. “She’s now sharing in the adventure as much as Peter is, and having as much fun with it as he is. Yeah, they take it seriously, but this isn’t a bloodthirsty moment. They see each other and they’re having a good time.”

Tiger Lily does it all while wearing a skirt and a half-down hairdo, which she adjusts amid the action. “She’s both strong and feminine. She can defeat a whole band of pirates in a skirt and still wants to make sure her hair looks good,” said Zaragoza. “It’s a huge responsibility to take on this new version of something that was historically harmful, but this Tiger Lily is so different. Little girls have been coming up to me after the show, telling me she’s their favorite and she makes them feel represented and empowered, and that’s something I’ve never felt about this character before.”

In the original musical, “there was no reason given that the Lost Boys and the Indians were fighting; it was just assumed that you try to kill Indians because they exist, which is the reality of this country,” lamented FastHorse. The new book roots the two groups’ conflict in petty theft and childish boy-girl annoyances, and resolves it in a new Act I finale number, with music from Styne, Comden and Green’s short-lived 1961 musical “Subways Are for Sleeping” and new lyrics by Adolph Green’s daughter, Amanda Green.

Titled “Friends Forever,” the “Ugg-a-Wugg” replacement is an upbeat friendship dance, in which the Lost Boys and the Indigenous people teach each other moves — with the latter’s dancing inspired by the elements, versus the traditions of any specific tribe — and blend them into one routine. “By putting them together in this beautiful way,” Price said of Lorin Latarro’s choreography, “they’re not only uniting in the lyrics and the story, but also in this dance.”

Raye Zaragoza plays a new take on Tiger Lily in the “Peter Pan” national tour.

( From Broadway in Hollywood)

FastHorse was also tasked with trimming the musical’s three-hour run time and minimizing the misogyny. Wendy Darling (Hawa Kamara) is now an aspiring surgeon who volunteers to sew on Peter’s shadow and nudges everyone to take vitamins. “In the original, Wendy works the whole time she’s in Neverland — cooking, cleaning, sewing — because of the assumption that serving men was fun and fulfilling for her,” said FastHorse. “We had to fix that reason for her to believably enjoy this place.”

And for the first time, Wendy sings, dances, fights and even has a conversation with Tiger Lily. “They’ve never spoken to each other before,” said the playwright. “It seems so small, but to have two women speak without a man present happens so infrequently in these older shows. I fought hard for it, and it got cut down a little bit, but I’m glad it’s in there.”

This production also cast Peter — previously played onstage by Mary Martin, Sandy Duncan and Cathy Rigby — with a young, male actor, Nolan Almeida. “Kids are very aware of gender now, and since our story doesn’t go into those conversations, it didn’t feel right to continue that tradition,” said Price.

The show also added back in “When I Went Home,” a song “that explains his emotional unavailability because he’s been so hurt,” added Price. “It was in the original show, but it was cut on the road because Mary Martin thought it was too sad for the children, but children today can take some sadness, they’ve experienced it in their world.”

Nolan Almeida as Peter Pan, center, and the cast of “Peter Pan.”

(Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade)

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FastHorse surprised producers by placing “Peter Pan” in contemporary America, ridding the opening and closing scenes in the Darling home of their 1950s London setting. The script encourages future stagings to consider their setting “quite broadly, with all socio economic levels, areas of the country, races, cultures, and types of families as the basis for what is truly universal.”

“Where I’m from in South Dakota, London is so unbelievably foreign, and to lots of children around the world, London is imperialism and the cause of the genocide of their people,” FastHorse said. “In this process, there was definitely some pushback, a fear that losing London and the period was going to be a problem. But it was important to me that any child going to this show could believe they could look out their window and see Peter fly by.”

The national tour, which began in late 2023 and continues through mid-2025, might be the first with its own land acknowledgment, recorded for each stop by FastHorse herself. So far, it’s traveled without any major backlash, just the occasional complaint about the cast’s diversity. (“We have a Darling family with several ethnicities in it, and if you can’t be OK with an ethnically diverse family, there’s nothing I can do for you,” FastHorse said.)

Its hit status should be a wake-up call to the industry’s decision makers, said ensemble actor Kenny Ramos, who is from the Barona Band of Mission Indians/Kumeyaay Nation and grew up on the Barona Indian Reservation. “It’s great that we have this Broadway-caliber musical production and this correction of a piece that was so problematic to the point where it basically became unproducible,” he said. “And yet, there are so many Native works out there that are not being produced.

“I hope that this successful production is a reminder that there’s Native talent out there, that Native stories are for everyone, and that the American musical theater is a place for Native people.”