Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the scripts behind the year’s most talked-about movies continues with Dìdi (弟弟), Focus Features’ comedic drama from writer and director Sean Wang. His narrative feature directorial debut, the coming-of-age story takes place in 2008, during the last month of summer before high school begins, as an impressionable 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy Chris Wang (Izaac Wang), aka Dìdi, learns what his family can’t teach him: how to skate, how to flirt, and how to love your mom.

The semi-autobiographical film world premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Audience Award in the U.S. Dramatic competition as well as the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award: Ensemble. It hit theaters in late July.

Speaking at the premiere of his movie at The Ray Theater in Park City, Sean Wang confessed, “I wish my adolescent self was kinder to myself. I wish...