The Farewell (2019 film)

Aspiring Chinese-American writer Billi maintains a close relationship with Nai Nai (paternal grandmother) who lives in Changchun, China. After receiving a rejection letter for a Guggenheim Fellowship, Billi discovers from her parents, Haiyan and Jian, that Nai Nai has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, and is predicted to have only a few months left to live.

Through deception and manipulation of medical test results, the diagnosis is kept a secret from Nai Nai herself. Nai Nai is, instead, falsely told that her recent doctor visits have only revealed benign findings. A wedding for Billi's cousin, Hao Hao, from Japan has been planned in China, as an excuse to unite the family to spend what is expected to be one last time with Nai Nai. Fearing Billi will end up exposing the lie to her grandmother, Haiyan and Jian tell her to remain in New York City.

Billi disobeys her parents' orders and flies to Changchun, shortly after the rest of the family arrive there. Billi assures her parents that she will not reveal the cancer diagnosis to Nai Nai. Throughout the trip, however, she clashes with the rest of the family, including the doctor treating her grandmother, over their deliberate dishonesty towards her grandmother.

Guilt-ridden, Billi expresses conflicted thoughts with her parents over the Chinese cultural beliefs that result in a family refusing to disclose such a life-threatening disease with the matriarch. One night, her uncle, Haibin, contends that the lie allows the family to bear the emotional burden of the diagnosis, rather than Nai Nai herself—a practice of collectivism that Haibin acknowledges to Billi differs from the individualistic values common in Western culture. Billi later learns that Nai Nai also told a similar lie to her husband up until his death when he was terminally ill.

On the day of the wedding, both Haibin and Hao Hao break down in tears on separate occasions but manage to proceed through the rest of the banquet as planned without raising Nai Nai's suspicions. To maintain the family lie, Billi intercepts Nai Nai's medical test results from the hospital and has it altered to reflect a clean bill of health. That night, Nai Nai gives Billi a hóngbāo, encouraging her to spend the money as she chooses. Billi admits that she wants to stay in Changchun to spend more time with Nai Nai, but Nai Nai declines, telling her that she needs to live her own life. When Billi reveals to her grandmother about the Guggenheim Fellowship rejection, Nai Nai responds by encouraging Billi to keep an open mind and not get hung up on this failure, rather than be "the bull endlessly ramming its horns into the corner of the room." She also says that life is not about what things one does, but more so about how one goes about doing them.

Billi keeps her promise to maintain the lie and shares a tearful goodbye with Nai Nai, as the rest of the visiting family members return to their homes in Japan and America. The credits reveal that six years after her diagnosis, the woman Nai Nai's character was based on is still alive.

• Awkwafina as Billi Wang (Chinese: 王比莉)
• Tzi Ma as Haiyan Wang (王海燕), Billi's father
• Diana Lin as Lu Jian (陆建), Billi's mother
• Zhao Shu-zhen as Nai Nai (奶奶), Billi's paternal grandmother
• Lu Hong (playing herself) as Little Nai Nai, Billi's grandmother's younger sister
• Jiang Yongbo as Haibin (海滨), Haiyan's older brother
• Chen Han as Hao Hao (浩浩), Haibin's son
• Aoi Mizuhara as Aiko (Japanese: 爱子), Hao Hao's Japanese fiancée
• Zhang Jing as Yuping, Haiyan's cousin
• Li Xiang as Aunty Ling, Haibin's wife
• Yang Xuejian as Mr. Li
• Jim Liu as Dr. Song

The film was based on a story called What You Don't Know that was initially shared by Wang on This American Life in April 2016.[5][6] 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."[7]

The film was primarily shot in Changchun, China, over the course of 24 days in June 2018.[8][9] Filming also took place in New York.[10] In an interview with Filmmaker, cinematographer Anna Franquesa Solano stated that the references for the film included Force Majeure and Still Walking.[10] 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."[10]

Director Lulu Wang says that she kept the secret from her grandmother during and after film production. It was awkward to keep the secret when the grandmother visited the filming, a block from her home. Wang claims her grandmother eventually found out from discussing the movie with her little sister, who plays herself in the movie.[11]

The film had its premiere in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival on January 25, 2019.[12] In January 2019, A24 acquired worldwide distribution rights to the film for $7 million, over Netflix, Amazon Studios, and Fox Searchlight.[12][13] It was released in the United States on July 12, 2019.[14] A fully Mandarin-subtitled version of the film played in select theaters on September 8, 2019.[15]

• Official website
• The Farewell on IMDb 
• The Farewell at AllMovie