Lulu Wang (filmmaker)

In 2005, while still a student, Wang received the Best Beginning Film Award at the Boston College Baldwin Awards for Storyteller, which she made together with fellow Boston College student Tony Hale.[11][12] They went on to win the Baldwin Award for Best Picture for the short film Pisces[13] at the Boston College Baldwin Film Festival the following year.[14] Wang and Hale also collaborated on the 2006 documentary short, Fishing the Gulf, on over-fishing in Panama.[11][15] Her next project was the 2007 short film Can-Can,[16] based on a short story by Arturo Vivante about marriage and infidelity.[11]

In 2008, shortly after moving to Los Angeles, Wang interned for a producer alongside Bernadette Bürgi. After a trip to IKEA, the two decided to make a film together due to their mutual affection for storytelling and romantic comedies.[17] Wang and Bürgi set up their own production company Flying Box Productions;[18] Wang directed multiple web shorts and music videos and, in 2014, her first feature film, Posthumous.[19] Set in Berlin, Germany, Posthumous is an American-German co-production starring Brit Marling and Jack Huston.[20] The film debuted at the Zurich Film Festival on 4 October 2014,[21] played in the U.S. at the Miami International Film Festival,[22] and has been released worldwide.

In 2014, Wang was awarded the Chaz and Roger Ebert Directing Fellowship at the Film Independent Spirit Awards. The same year, she was chosen as a Film Independent Project Involve Directing Fellow.[23][24] Wang's 2015 short film Touch premiered at the Palm Springs International ShortFest.[25] Touch was an NBCU Short Film Festival finalist,[26] was selected by the American Cinematheque for its Annual Focus on Female Directors,[27] and won Best Drama at the Asians on Film Festival.[28]

In May 2016, Wang wrote and narrated a story, "What You Don't Know", for the radio program This American Life.[29] Later that year, development began on a feature film based on the story with producer Chris Weitz, who had heard it on the radio.[8][17][30] In 2017, Wang was chosen to participate in Sundance Institute’s FilmTwo Initiative, which provides guidance for filmmakers creating their second feature films.[23][31]

In January 2019, Wang's second feature film, The Farewell, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it was picked up for worldwide distribution by A24.[32] The film follows struggling New York City artist Billi (played by Awkwafina in her first dramatic role), who travels to China for a family reunion to visit her dying grandmother. The family has decided to keep the truth about her condition a secret from Nai Nai (Mandarin for "grandmother") and sets up a wedding as a pretense for their reunion.[33][34] Wang based the film on her own grandmother's illness, which also included her family setting up a wedding as a pretense; the film opens with a title card stating Based on an actual lie.[33][35][36] The film is presented for the most part in Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles. It was filmed in the neighborhood where Wang's grandmother lived and Wang cast her actual great aunt Lu Hong to play herself in the film.[34] After its Sundance premiere, numerous publications listed The Farewell as a standout at the festival, including Variety,[37] Thrillist,[38] and Rolling Stone.[39] In an IndieWire critics survey published after the festival, The Farewell was voted Best Film and Best Screenplay and Wang was voted Best Director.[40] The film holds a 99% Critics Consensus rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 207 reviews.[41]

In January 2019, Variety named Wang one of ten "Directors to Watch." In an interview with the publication, she described her next project as "very grounded science fiction."[42]

The Farewell opened in limited release in four US theaters on July 12, 2019. The film opened to a gross of $351,330, averaging $87,833 per theater, surpassing the average of Avengers: Endgame which averaged $76,601 in 4,662 theaters for a gross of $357,115,007 on its opening weekend.[43]The Farewell was released nationwide in the US on August 2, 2019.[44]

On December 4, 2019, the American Film Institute announced that The Farewell was one of that year's ten recipients of the 2019 AFI Awards for "films that are culturally and artistically representative" of 2019's "most significant achievements in the art of the moving image."[45] For her role as Billi, Awkwafina was awarded the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy on January 5, 2020. The Farewell won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Feature at the 35th Independent Spirit Awards in Santa Monica, California on February 8, 2020.[46]

Wang is pursuing a film adaptation of Alexander Weinstein's collection of science fiction short stories, Children of the New World, which, according to Wang, "centers on questions of family."[47] On January 28, 2021 Apple released an 11-minute short film called Nian written and directed by Wang, celebrating the 2021 Chinese New Year. The short film was shot in its entirety using an iPhone 12 Pro Max.[48][49]