You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to make movies, but writer-director Lloyd Lee Choi almost became one on the path to his feature debut, “Lucky Lu,” premiering May 19 at Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes.
“I got into Ryerson University for aerospace engineering at 17, and was on the verge of going, but at the last minute I sort of had an existential crisis,” Choi reveals. “I think a lot of Asian-American kids and kids of immigrants [like me] can relate. It would’ve been a very safe, comfortable life, but it didn’t feel right at all, so I applied to a liberal arts school in Vancouver and ended up living with all the film students in the dormitory. They roped me into helping make student films, and I fell in love with the process.”
Another transformative moment for Choi was randomly finding Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund’s Brazilian drama “City of God.” Like “Lucky Lu” and his fave filmmakers, the Dardenne brothers, it explores the lives of the working class and “people on the fringes” of society. “It blew my mind and opened the door for me to stories being told outside of my bubble,” he says. Well, not entirely: “My parents had that classic immigrant experience, in terms of coming here without much,” he adds. “They ran a convenience store for years, and my grandfather worked a lot of blue collar jobs to survive, so I really understood that hustle and the deep desire to provide for their kids.”
It all informed Choi’s portrait of Lu (played by 2018 Cannes juror Chang Chen), a New York City immigrant whose fragile existence as a deliveryman falls apart when his e-bike is stolen. In a race against time, Lu searches for his bike and money to pay for a new apartment as his long-estranged wife and daughter arrive from Taipei.
Toronto-raised, Korean-Canadian Choi, who has numerous commercials under his belt, moved to New York a few years before the pandemic hit. “The city was basically surviving off delivery food, and drivers were considered essential workers all of a sudden,” he says. “So as I’d see all these different faces handing off food. I started imagining the sacrifices they made to feed the city, but also to survive.” It inspired Choi’s 2022 Palme d’Or-nominated short “Same Old,” which he adapted into “Lucky Lu.” His 2023 short “Closing Dynasty,” another Gotham-set tale dealing with poverty, won top awards in Berlin, SXSW, AFI Fest and other festivals.
“Lucky” begs comparison to Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 Italian neorealistic drama “The Bicycle Thief” with its pathos, suspense, a few shared plot points and sentimental moments in its protagonist’s relationship with his young child. It took Choi two months to find 7-year-old Carabelle Manna, who plays Lu’s daughter, Queenie. “She never acted before, but I’m so glad we took that chance,” he says. “She really makes the film.” So does the cinematography, which captures the shadowy grit of Chinatown during a cold, rainy 22-day shoot.
Choi, who is repped by WME (also the film’s domestic rep, alongside international rep Film Constellation) and Canopy Media Partners, has at least two more films up his sleeve. The first will likely be an underdog sports drama, “a Korean-American father-son story about the rise and fall of a prodigy golfer.” The other is a mystery thriller and portrait of motherhood set in Korea, focusing on another delivery person. But don’t expect Choi to stray too far from his dramatic indie roots. His golfing film is “more tonally aligned to something like ‘Whiplash’ than ‘Happy Gilmore,’” he laughs.
