The Farewell reaches out across East-West divide

NEW YORK - Film director Lulu Wang knew that her pitch for The Farewell was unconventional.

She wanted to make an autobiographical drama about the time when, in 2013, her family learned that her grandmother in China, affectionately called Nai Nai, had stage 4 lung cancer and was given three months to live. The grim diagnosis was kept from Nai Nai, a somewhat common approach to death and dying in China.

Wang, whose family had moved from Beijing to Florida when she was 6, had doubts. Still, she reluctantly went along with the well-intended deceit, flying back for a cousin's wedding hurried along as an excuse to reunite the family before Nai Nai was expected to die.