No matter how successful a filmmaker gets, few have a week like Sean Wang did in late January.

On the first full day of the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 19, Wang’s feature film debut, the Fremont-shot “Dìdi,” a coming-of-age dramedy about a Taiwanese American boy, made its world premiere.

Four days later, he was in Fremont, sitting with both his grandmothers, who are the stars of Wang’s “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó” (“Grandma & Grandma”), to watch the Oscar nominations as the 17-minute film was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary short, a moment of “crazy joy” captured in a video.

Hours later, he was back in Park City, Utah, for another screening of “Dìdi,” which a few days later won the Sundance’s U.S. dramatic audience award and U.S. dramatic special jury ensemble award. Then he picked up a distributor in Focus Features, which is targeting a summer release for the film starring Izaac Wang as a stand-in for young Sean and San Francisco actress Joan Chen (“The Last Emperor”) as his mother.

Now “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó,” which played at the 2023 SFFilm Festival, will make its streaming debut on Disney+ and Hulu on Friday, Feb. 9. 

Wang — who was born in San Jose, grew up in Fremont, and went to De Anza College and the University of Southern California — spoke to the Chronicle in a video interview from his apartment in Los Angeles.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What were you thinking when the Academy Awards were announced? You were on a 15-film shortlist, so you knew you had a shot. But your grandmothers’ reaction on that video was great.

A: My cinematographer, my good friend Sam Davis, who also produced the short, he shot “Dìdi” as well, and we were at Sundance, so we decided to fly home late Monday night to watch the nominations with my grandmothers, just in case we got nominated. So we got there at like midnight. We slept at 2 in the morning and woke up at 5 in the morning to watch the nominations, got nominated — which is crazy — then half an hour later, we had to get back on a flight back to Park City.

A crazy amount of energy and joy at 5:30 in the morning.

Q: You have made two films set in Fremont, so you obviously have warm memories of the place. What do you especially love about it?

A: It’s such a multicultural community. I grew up inside of a very deeply rooted immigrant community, so I grew up with a lot of children of immigrants. You don’t really know anything other than your given circumstances, so it wasn’t until I left home that I realized how special it was to grow up in the Bay Area. Experiencing all these different types of cultures, and not because I was even seeking them out, but just because of the people around me. All different types of foods, different languages.

Q: What made you decide to become a filmmaker?

A: I guess this origin story really traces back to skateboarding for me. Growing up in Fremont, I didn’t know a single other filmmaker. But I fell in love with skating when I was 12, 13 years old, and through skating there is a big culture of documenting things, of photography and videos. I didn’t know it was filmmaking at the time, but I was making little YouTube videos with my friends.

Ultimately, it was through that and through (the influence of) Spike Jonze, also a skater director, that I sort of saw this gateway into all these other things that I love, which is documentary filmmaking, music videos and commercials and, ultimately, feature films.

Q: There seems to be a resurgence of independent feature filmmaking in the Bay Area. Last year there was Babak Jalali’s “Fremont” and  Savanah Leaf’s “Earth Mama.” Now “Dìdi.” 

A: Really, the last decade. Movies like “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” and “Blindspotting” and “Sorry to Bother You.” Before that, “Medicine for Melancholy.” There were a lot of Bay Area films being made that I loved and influenced me.

Then at De Anza College was my first brush with, I guess you’d call it the traditional film education. It was critical-studies focused, and I learned so much. I was introduced to older movies, like (François) Truffaut — “The 400 Blows” is one of my favorite movies of all time. It’s where I took my first screenwriting classes. It’s where a lot of the seeds were planted.

Q: You seem wise beyond your years. You’re 29, yet “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó” is filled with wisdom and lessons about the aging process and enjoying life even as you navigate its ups and downs.

A: It was personal. I wanted to make a film that could be a container for my grandmothers’ humanity, joy, silliness and humor, but also the pain of their lives. The mortality. The melancholy. Also, I wanted to document those few months where I was living at home with them in the Bay Area, the longest I had been home since leaving for college. 

I also wanted to honor and humanize them in the wake of a lot of anti-Asian hate crimes that are happening in the Bay Area. I wanted to make something that helped people like them really feel seen. And I wanted my family to have a memento that we can look back on years from now when, you know, they may not be here on this Earth anymore.

Q: Are you taking your grandmothers to the Oscars on March 10?

A:  Oh, yeah. They’re excited. The first time we got to see this movie was at SFFilm with a sold-out crowd, and they were like celebrities. It was really special for them.

Reach G. Allen Johnson: ajohnson@sfchronicle.com