TAIPEI – Two elderly women are taking this video call together and one has just chided the other for apparently failing to ace the interview. 

“You totally missed the point of the journalist’s question. I’ll answer,” says 86-year-old Chang Li Hua to Yi Yan Fuei, 96, who is seated beside her. 

It is a moment that reflects the playfulness of their relationship as grandmothers who are also in-laws, best friends and roommates. 

Now, the California-based Taiwanese duo have another label they can wear proudly: leading ladies of an Oscar-nominated film. 

And, yes, the two have already secured a stylist for the glitzy awards ceremony on March 10 – Shirley Kurata, no less, the costume designer for hit film Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022).

“It all feels like a dream – it’s like I’ve been to another world,” says Yi in Mandarin. “But we’re so happy.” 

Chang and Yi are the stars of the documentary short Nai Nai & Wai Po, which is directed by their Taiwanese-American grandson Sean Wang and available on Disney+.

Yi is Wang’s titular Nai Nai (which means paternal grandmother in Mandarin), while Chang, his maternal grandmother, goes by Wai Po. 

In a video call taken from their home in Fremont, the two grandmothers are both wearing bright red outfits, huge smiles and more than a few wrinkles.

Their film-maker grandson has also dialled in from his home in Los Angeles and often sports a look of amusement whenever his grandmothers speak. The elderly women banter in Mandarin, while their grandson speaks in English.

“They really are the most pure form of joy in my life,” Wang, 29, says with a grin.

His 17-minute film is centred on the daily lives of his two grandmothers at home during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021, amid worsening racist violence against Asians in the United States. Wang had moved back to live with them at the time.

In between laugh-out-loud scenes – which include Wai Po’s complaints about Nai Nai’s excessive farts and a game of intense arm wrestling – there are quiet moments of serious reflection about the grandmothers’ fear of the outside world at the time.

“It’s been a year since Nai Nai and I have gone out to the market,” Chang says at one point in the film. “Every time we read the newspaper, it’s terrifying.” 

Wang notes that the spike in anti-Asian hate crimes then was a big reason he felt compelled to make the film.

“So much of what inspired this movie was the fact that people like my grandmothers were being dehumanised,” he says. 

“People like Nai Nai and Wai Po were being targeted, and they were being overlooked and relegated to victims of hate crime. But spend a few minutes with them and you see this joy – people who are three-dimensional and human.”

It did not take much convincing for his grandmothers to agree to open up the most intimate parts of their lives to the camera. 

Wang says they are accustomed to being filmed by him, laughing as he recalls an old Christmas card video he shot with his grandmothers in 2018. 

The video, which was sent to their closest friends and family members, features the two grandmothers acting out a comedy sketch. In it, they kill and then bury their grandson’s body after he dares to refuse their offer of blueberries. 

Jokingly referring to the video as the “proof of concept” for his now Academy Award-nominated short, he says: “I was, like, ‘There’s something here.’ There’s something so much more to this that’s bigger and deeper than a one-minute Christmas card.”

As for Chang and Yi, they are just enjoying every minute of their film star journey. 

Ahead of the Oscars, they have already walked the red carpet at various festivals and done dozens of interviews. 

“Before the film, I felt like we were old and useless. But after filming, we realised there’s still a lot we can do. We can be characters in movies and be functional people in society,” says Chang.

“We’re very grateful for all the support you’ve given to us and to our grandson.” 

• Nai Nai & Wai Po is available on Disney+.