The Farewell (2019 film)

The Farewell is a 2019 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Lulu Wang. It stars Awkwafina, Tzi Ma, Diana Lin, Zhao Shuzhen, Lu Hong, and Jiang Yongbo. It was screened in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. It is scheduled to be released on July 12, 2019, by A24.

Premise
Over the objections of her parents, a Chinese-American woman named Billi returns to China after her grandmother has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, which is kept as a secret from the matriarch.

Cast

 * Awkwafina as Billi
 * Tzi Ma as Haiyan, Billi's father
 * Diana Lin as Jian, Billi's mother
 * Zhao Shuzhen as Nai Nai, Billi's grandmother
 * Lu Hong as Little Nai Nai, Nai Nai's younger sister
 * Jiang Yongbo as Haibin, Haiyan's older brother
 * Chen Han as Hao Hao, Haibin's son
 * Aoi Mizuhara as Aiko, Hao Hao's girlfriend
 * Chen Hanwei
 * Li Xiang

Production
The film was based on an story initially shared on This American Life. Wang said that the film was based on her grandmother's illness, stating that "I always felt the divide in my relationship to my family versus my relationship to my classmates and to my colleagues and to the world that I inhabit. That's just the nature of being an immigrant and straddling two cultures."

The film was primarily shot in Changchun, China. The filming also took place in New York. In an interview with Filmmaker, cinematographer Anna Franquesa Solano stated that the references for the film included Force Majeure and Still Walking. However, she added that her main source of inspiration came from "spending time with Lulu's family at their home in Changchun, during pre-production.”

Release
The film had its premiere in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival on January 25, 2019. In January 2019, A24 acquired worldwide distribution rights to the film for $7 million, over Netflix, Amazon Studios, and Fox Searchlight. It is scheduled to be released on July 12, 2019.

Reception
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 100% based on 36 reviews, with an average rating of 8.71/10. On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 87 out of 100, based on 11 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

Eric Kohn of IndieWire gave the film an A− grade and praised Awkwafina's performance, writing, "As a Chinese-American grappling with the traditionalism of her past and its impact on the future, she's an absorbing engine for the movie's introspective look at a most unusual family reunion." Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair wrote, "Wang movingly tells not just a story about the negotiations of familial love, but also of the immigrant experience, of revisiting one's homeland to, in some senses, say goodbye to it." David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter commented that "its moments of sweet sentimentality are fully earned and heartfelt."