From Indonesia To The Oscars: The Creators Of Daly City Tell All

Daly City has quietly been flying the flag for Indonesian representation and culture, and has made director Nick Hartanto a history-maker as the first every Indonesian-American to qualify for the Academy Awards.

We chatted to Nick and actor Michelle Lukiman (Eliawati), about what it took to bring this moving story to life, and much more!

Let’s start light: Daly City is described as an autobiographical film. What moment or memory from your childhood did making this film bring back to the surface for you?

Nick Hartanto (Director): This is always the hard part for me because I have to call my mom out. She did, in fact, buy Chinese food and she told me, as a little boy, that we were going to pretend that she had cooked it, for a church potluck we were attending that night. And the church congregation assumed that it was some traditional Indonesian dish and she let them believe it. The pastor later brought her up on stage to surprise her with an award for the best dish in the potluck as I sat in the audience with my jaw dropped.

This has always been a funny story that my family loves to tell, but as I grew older and as a filmmaker, I came to realize that it was much more complex than I had realized and carried within it many of the ideas I was interested in exploring in myself; ideas like exoticism, the model minority myth and just capturing this feeling that we had as new immigrants to this country…the feeling of wanting to fit in, wanting to belong, in all its shades of gray.

The entire night the film portrays actually happened, including a much heavier scene with my father. We shot in locations where the story actually occurred, like the church, using church members who were there when it happened to play some of the supporting roles.

The film touches on the pressures of assimilation and the model minority myth. How did you approach portraying these themes in the film?

Nick: One of the ideas that excited me the most, and inspired me to make this film, was exploring the duality of the model minority myth. I wanted to have a story structure that presented two halves, the mother and the father’s experience, with the son acting as a narrator of sorts. In the mother’s half, she exemplifies the benefits of being the model minority, finding acceptance and success within a community, quite literally being rewarded for her behavior.

But in the father’s half, we see the cost of playing that role. We employed many devices like using the same ambient music track, the same blocking and shot structure and progression in both sections, to hopefully convey that there is a relationship between the two halves, not connected by plot but rather by theme, and that the differences are what’s most intriguing.

You chose to shoot the film in the actual locations where these events took place. How did returning to those spaces influence the storytelling in the film?

Nick: The production was shot in my hometown of Daly City, CA, a largely immigrant community bordering San Francisco. Like you said, we used locations where the events actually occurred, like the church, casting people who were there when it happened to play supporting roles. When Michelle gave her award acceptance speech in front of the congregation, there was a woman in the audience who told me that she remembered the speech. Much of my work has gone through a similar process, blurring the lines between my memory and artifice.

Michelle Lukiman (Eliawati): Playing a character based on the writer/director’s mom, for an audience that was there for the real thing: no pressure on my end.

Nick: In my father’s scene, he is bullied and ridiculed by his coworkers at a used car dealership. It’s an interesting scene because the boy can understand their jokes very clearly because of his grasp of English, but the father less so. The father attempts to laugh with them even though the jokes are at his expense, leaving the boy angry that his father doesn’t understand. One of our actors was actually a car salesman and we did a lot of improvisation during rehearsals to come up with their banter, search for the feeling, and to recreate my memory in a way.

It was only until writing this script and reliving these memories, that I realized, that of course, my father was emotionally intelligent enough to understand all the jokes that were directed at him even if he didn’t have a strong understanding of English. I found so much power in excavating those memories and reliving them through my parent’s eyes. I’ve gained such a deeper understanding of what they had to do to survive and succeed in a new country and I hope that this film can honor their sacrifices but also inspire a new generation of immigrants to reflect on the trappings of being the model minority.

You’ve mentioned a sense of urgency in telling this story now. What about today’s cultural climate makes this narrative particularly resonant to you?

Nick: When I was a child I drew a lot of comic books. I was a latchkey kid and spent hours everyday after school drawing. By the time I was in middle school, I had probably killed an entire rain forest. But it was only when I was an adult that I realized that the entire universe of super heroes and villains I had created were all white. I was a child of the 90’s and everything I watched on TV and read in books created this kind of white default in my mind.

Michelle: Oh my gosh, same. I was only taught how to draw one type of eyeball shape in art class, and it was glaringly apparent in my doodles.

Nick: I literally couldn’t see myself as the hero of my own stories. And I really wanted to change that with this film and represent my culture, and my experiences, specifically as an Indonesian-American, in this country.

Indonesian-American representation is still rare in American cinema. What does it mean to you to bring this community to the screen?

Nick: I was born in Indonesia and came to this country when I was quite young. We were working class and my parents knew nothing about applying to colleges, especially film school. My sister and I did the model minority thing and got good grades and financial assistance to continue moving up the ladder.

For me though, the higher I climbed the lonelier it felt, in a way, and making “Daly City” was quite literally a homecoming for me. It allowed me to reconnect with my Indonesian community and Asian American community. I found a lot of power in that and the experience has been quite nourishing.

By far, our greatest challenge making this film was casting our three Indonesian lead actors. To this day, I can only count on one hand the amount of working Indonesian actors that I know in this country. Our Casting Director, Christian Bustamante, who specializes in street casting and finding Southeast Asian talent, emphasized from the very beginning that we needed to spread the word within the Indonesian community across the entire country.

So I began to reach out to the Consulates, gamelan music groups and dance groups, and Christian was literally on the ground in LA street casting. He was at a short film screening when he asked if he could come up on stage during the Q&A to address the audience asking them if they knew any Indonesian willing to act, and lo and behold, a woman approached him afterwards and said, “You need to meet my son!”, and that’s how we found our 10 year old lead actor, Jett.

It took us almost half a year to find our cast but it was a very special experience, meeting Indonesians from all walks of life, giving them the opportunity to play a leading role, and hearing them perform dialogue in our language. I’m so proud that we didn’t give up!

Michelle: And on the other side of that process for me, I actually refrained from submitting for Eliawati at first. Indonesian roles are few and far between in Hollywood, but even so, I wasn’t confident that I, a first-gen kid who grew up in LA, could do the role justice. However, as they went about their casting the first few months, life took me back to Indonesia for the first time as an adult, and something shifted. I’m so grateful Christian saw something in me and reached out again with the script.

Everything fell into place quite naturally after that and it’s been so affirming to represent Indonesia and its diaspora through this story. One of the funniest and biggest compliments now is when audience members come up to me right after watching the film, tell me they loved it, then ask me what my role was in it because they do not recognize regular first-gen me as Eliawati in the slightest.

In the last few years, I’ve started to hear Indonesia more in the cultural conversation in the U.S. and am excited to see an uptick in characters specifically written as Indonesian because, for the longest time, we’ve been lumped in with our South East Asian neighbors or with Asians in general. But there are still some reductive habits that mainstream media falls back on when they refer to Indonesia – Bali, volcanoes, I don’t know – some TV show’s quick reference of it as a far-off place where crazy things happen.

So it’s quite refreshing to be able to share a slice of the Indonesian diaspora that invites more curiosity. To be able to bring Indonesia and Indonesian-Americans into the conversation in a way that feels local, tender, multi-dimensional – feels fantastic and important.

The film uses a small, intimate family moment to explore larger issues of identity and belonging. Why was that scale and subtlety important to you personally?

Nick: I think the subtlety you refer to is a product of how the movie is largely about an internal conflict, which is quite a no no for screenplays but excites me as a filmmaker. Our antagonists aren’t really that antagonistic and the obstacles are mainly happening within the minds of the protagonists and their desires to find belonging in a new country.

I think the subtlety also comes from being a food film. My greatest loves in life are food and film. After I graduated film school, my starving artist job was actually as a line cook in fine dining restaurants in New York and San Francisco. Perhaps my connection to food allows me to see meaning and stories where other people can’t…my last film was about a quest for a tortilla and Daly City is about a lie at a potluck.

I also think there’s a reason why so many Asian immigrant kids like myself are so food obsessed. Even though I’ve lost many parts of my Indonesian identity having grown up in America, cooking our food and tasting our food has always served as an unbreakable bond to my culture that’s able to transcend distance and even language.

Michelle: I think what Nick has captured here is the phenomenon that the more specific something is, the more universal it can be. This is a capsule of Nick’s childhood experience, but in exploring this funny little premise of lying about a potluck dish, he’s invited everyone to find a piece of themselves in the story. The thoughtful textures, and even the way the camera moves with the characters in these everyday moments, makes them into real, nuanced people that you can get to know.

My home life has always felt like such a, an almost secret little world. Especially as Indonesian-American immigrants in the U.S., that intersection of American influence with our Indonesian and Chinese roots felt so unique and confined to me and my family members.

Even amongst other Asian American peers, there were similarities, but rarely perfect alignment. Working on this project and sharing experiences with each other, the little commonalities that were revealed really stunned me. It felt quite comforting – like, this isn’t Indo-specific, but the part where the family watches Yan Can Cook on the couch?

My family and I used to watch that cooking show all the time and I’m not sure I’ve ever had a chance to reference that with anyone else. I didn’t expect to see the inner workings of my home life on the big screen, let alone imagine I’d be the one up there portraying it.

Have your own families seen the film and what was their response?

Nick: My mother giggled her way through her half, witnessing the recreation of her lie. She was very quiet during the second half about my father, saying “TMI Nick…you’re showing the world our laundry.”

Michelle: Meanwhile, my parents didn’t have as profound or emotional an outward reaction as my sentimental self was expecting. I feel like, being an overthinking first-gen kid, I’ve struggled with how my parents communicated with me. That’s part of why embodying them in this way was so cathartic.

I believe there’s an awkward pride and humble joy in seeing themselves represented onscreen, through a vulnerable yet appreciative lens.
They’ve seen it a few times now, and with every larger, sold-out screening, it feels like a bit more affirmation of their paths and mine. It’s been really special to have them come out sporting (matching!) traditional batik and witness the larger community celebrate us.

Nick: Michelle really inspired the entire Indo cast and me to wear our batiks to film festivals and show off our colors in a way, and I’m very thankful for that. She actually found me a beautiful batik in Indonesia from when she was representing us at Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival last year, and I wear it as often as I can now with pride!

Michelle: I was so worried the shirt wouldn’t fit. Nick is quite tall and I’m quite proud of that find.

In telling this story, did you uncover any personal truths about what parts of yourself (or your family’s) were shaped by that pressure?

Michelle: I’m not sure I was as protective a kid as Bastian is in the film.  I did pick up on our otherness. But I took advantage of the agility that my parents didn’t have, like with language, for example; they’d speak to me in Indonesian and I’d respond in English – helpful for maintaining a neutral American accent, not great for retaining Indonesian fluency. 
I was a bookworm and read everything (in English) that I could get my hands on. I really dove deep into the English of it all – one of my degrees is literally in “English”. Who knows how much of that was a reaction to the challenges my parents faced starting over and navigating communication here.

I grew used to toggling into other worlds and have come to love language-learning in general, for the cultural perspectives and bridges you can discover. Did you know that Spanish and Indonesian share quite a few common words? It makes sense given the history. But I was still caught off-guard during yoga teacher training when I recognized certain Indonesian sounds in the Sanskrit we were studying. It’s all so entwined.

I appreciate my parents’ journey more and more as I get older, and I think this work has allowed me to retroactively show appreciation in a big way, by stepping into their shoes. To an extent, it forced me to face what is sometimes a big insecurity in owning my Indonesian identity: maneuvering in my mother tongue among native speakers.

I really worked on both my agility in Bahasa Indonesia and on my Indonesian-accented English to embody this character who grew up there and had only recently immigrated. The irony of me now trying to practice by switching family conversations from English back to Indonesian!

A turning of the tables, a rebalancing after assimilation overcorrection. Acknowledging how hard it is for anyone to tackle a new way of communicating and carrying oneself. And how admirable it is of everyone who uproots and puts themselves out there like that.

How do you hope young immigrants or first-generation viewers will respond to the film and its portrayal of cultural duality?

Michelle: First and foremost, I hope they feel seen. Proud of our collective resourcefulness. And reminded that difference is not deficiency. There is so much beyond words.

I hope they feel immense comfort particularly in the ending scenes of the film. When our family can finally let their hair down. The coziness of the house’s humble yet colorful interior, the care built into their routine, the ever-present patchwork of food at the ready.

It’s all very lowkey, an intimate slice of life, and in our very curated, shiny Instagram world, perhaps it can offer some kind of validation to anyone who needs to see something closer to their everyday experience. As a kid, I would have loved seeing this understated appreciation on the big screen. They’re just eating leftover donuts in front of the TV, but it feels safe, warm, comfortable: it feels like love.

The mother-son dynamic is also central to the story. What work did you do to build a relationship that feels authentic and emotionally grounded?

Michelle: Living in the same Airbnb for the whole shoot helped. Ha. Jett and I actually formed more of a sibling, maybe aunt, relationship off-screen: very playful, very jokey. I loved having Jett’s real mom there as well, to add their dynamic to my pile of inspiration.

I tried to stay connected and keep a playful rapport on set. And I think that comes through in Eliawati’s relationship with Bastian. What I love about her as a mom is that she doesn’t take everything so starkly – she stays flexible, smart, and levels with her son instead of hiding everything from him. It’s not a strictly stern-parent relationship; there’s a lot of sweetness and respect there.

And I think especially when dealing with awkward situations and tricky subject matter, both as actors and as the characters, that bit of play and that ability to laugh become very important.

Nick: Michelle and Jett’s energy together was so loose and loving and it was such a gift! At one point they even learned each other’s lines, able to rehearse an entire scene with the roles reversed! It was so impressive to watch and a product of how comfortable they were with each other.

Many stories about identity within communities of colour are told through documentaries. How did you feel a narrative format illuminated this topic in a way a documentary couldn’t?

Nick: Even though the idea of the “model minority myth” is an old one, I only really delved deep into researching it during the pandemic, mainly through documentaries. I highly recommend watching Jon Osaki’s “Not Your Model Minority.” I felt passionately that I wanted to explore this idea in some way, but like I mentioned, it is such an internal conflict that I think it’s not an easy one to portray within a narrative film.

It was only until I reflected on my memory about the church potluck incident with my mother, that I realized that this goofy plotline could be the perfect vehicle for exploring such weighty themes.

What are some of your favourite memories from making the film?

Nick: After we wrapped, Jett came up to me and asked me to take my baseball cap off and then he asked me to take my glasses off. He just stared, observing my face for a while…and I’d like to think that he saw a bit of himself in me, just like I saw a lot of myself in him. And I believe it’s so important to be able to see someone who looks like you in positions of leadership and power, and unlike when I was his age, I hope he’s able to imagine himself as the hero of his own story.

Michelle: Mm. What a moment.

I loved the impromptu role swap Nick mentioned earlier: Jett and I were sitting in the car between takes and spontaneously played out the whole scene where we’re loading in the chicken, him saying all of my lines and me saying all of his. I was just trying to keep our energy up since it was pretty late at night, but it was such a funny and impressive thing for him to do.

He had all my lines down, with added sass: “we want to make a good impression, kaaan”. That car, with its automatic seatbelts, maroon details, and musty 90s smell, was very similar to the old Honda my dad used to drive, and it was just so nostalgic being in there.

The whole last part of the movie, in the house, also feels so near and dear to me. Nick was awesome with letting us ad-lib, and when I yelled “ey cuci tangan, ya” (“hey wash your hands, okay”) as the family bursts through the front door, I was channeling my mom verbatim; I hear her voice every time I watch it.

Do you have a specific moment from the film (without spoilers) that you hope people notice in particular?

Nick: There is a Chekhov’s gun moment where Bastian sets up the idea early on that if a durian fruit were to fall from a tree and hit someone on the head, it could kill you. We were supposed to fire that gun with a major payoff at the end of the film, where Bastian has a revenge fantasy, seeing a durian fall from the sky, killing his father’s boss.

We went through all the painstaking effort to make a fake durian and build a contraption that would drop it on the actor’s head. Unfortunately, we had to cut the scene and it was a casualty of the editing process. I think the cast and crew are still mad at me to this day that the scene didn’t make the final cut.

Michelle: I thought of this moment, too! Every time we got to the part of the potluck scene where Bastian innocently offers up this polarizing, odorous fruit as our cultural representative, I’d wince involuntarily. (Full disclosure: not a durian fan.) It’s amusing, but it’s also this very knowing moment.

Depending on the audience that we’re playing to, they get the impact and chuckle right away. Bastian’s whipsmart, but he’s still a kid. He isn’t spiraling thinking that what he chooses in that moment might hold a disproportionate amount of weight. (And as it turns out in this case, a weight that could literally kill you later.)

I am one of the aforementioned cast that is waiting for the cut durian scene to reveal itself somewhere, anywhere: please.

The film recently won a Grand Jury Award and received Academy Award qualification. How has the festival journey influenced how you see the film now?

Nick: The past year and a half has been life changing. We spent almost 6 months looking for an Indonesian cast and that process reconnected me with my people and I’ve begun reclaiming so much of what was erased. I now play in a gamelan group, using music to connect with my ancestors and our beliefs.

Daly City has screened at 40 film festivals all over the world. I remember being profoundly moved and inspired in a theater at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival watching a documentary about how every right we have, even the right to say “Asian-American,” was fought for with the blood and sweat of the people before us. I looked around the audience and saw tears on the faces of Asian elders who had protested in the 60’s.

And by winning the Special Jury Award at Salute Your Shorts Film Festival, it makes me the first Indonesian-American to qualify for the Academy Awards. I now regularly meet with young Indo filmmakers who want to know how I did it, how we found our Indonesian cast and how to navigate festivals. And I’m trying to pass along support and knowledge to what I hope is the new wave of the Indonesian diaspora.

Michelle: When I first signed onto this project, it was because of how seen I personally felt in the story, the playful poignance of the script, and how much I felt like I knew my character already. Aside from the Indonesianness of it all, the first thing the logline did was tap into my personal anxiety around potlucks. Wasn’t thinking about a slew of festival awards or the Oscars at all.

So the buzz we’ve gotten took me by surprise at first. Because I was so drawn to the film for its specificity, I wasn’t yet sure how widely it would resonate. While Daly City spotlights the Indonesian-American experience and Nick’s hometown, it’s become clear that the film can speak to audiences far beyond that.

One of my favorite parts of sharing our work has been the many individual viewers who’ve shared how they see themselves or their families in this story, Indonesian or not. For me, it feels significant to be seen. But as someone who grew up always adapting to other cultures, norms, stories, it feels even more immense for strangers to see themselves in you.

So now this little story about an immigrant family chasing the American Dream, has taken our film family on a wild parallel journey putting us in contention for the Oscars… that may be as close to Hollywood’s American Dream as you can get. It’s incredible. Affirming. Crazy. In Bastian’s words, “Holy crap!”

Ultimately, what do you hope audiences carry with them after watching Daly City?

Nick: I think there’s a certain unconscious wisdom that immigrant children have. The only answer that our young protagonist Bastian can offer in reaction to all the obstacles his family faces that night is to request an honest Indonesian meal. A request to take their masks off, let their hair down and reconnect with their culture.

I think so many immigrant kids are attempting to reconnect as well by taking trips to their homeland, learning to cook their food and relearning their language. I think there is incredible power in that. For me, this story is about inspiring a new generation of immigrants so that we can both understand our parents’ sacrifices in becoming the model minority and also transcend them.

Michelle: Hopefully everyone is inspired to find some good Indonesian food, too.

Daly City can be seen here and the Academy Screening Room for Academy members.