I rarely watch a short film more than once, yet after streaming Daly City on my laptop, I wanted to see how it felt on the big screen.Then, last week,  I finally decided to go see the same film at the Revolution Me Film Festival, a film festival in Brooklyn, which was very inspiring and gave an opportunity for talented new filmmakers to be showcased. 

After the big screen version of Daly City, I thought to myself, "This short film is indeed worthy of being selected to be nominated for Best Short Film at the 2026 Oscars".

Daly City is an autobiographical film by Nick Hartanto, a Brooklyn-based filmmaker. The story follows the humorous and memorable childhood experiences of Nick and his mother, who were caught up in the cultural divide and discrimination against immigrants in San Francisco. It all started with chicken and a potluck, where takeout chicken from a Chinese restaurant was chosen as the best dish in a church potluck competition. To bridge the divide between locals and immigrants, Nick's mother admitted that the chicken was her own dish.

The film's storytelling style, casting, and in-depth direction demonstrate the dynamic quality of this film, which explores the clash between two norms of life: those of local residents and those of immigrants from Asia. All of this is presented captivatingly through a 4:3 camera frame, conveying the realities of public life in the 1990s, when the public was accustomed to the square screen of the television era.

After watching this film, I had the opportunity to speak with Nick Hartanto, also known as a professional cinematographer. Nick Hartanto is an Indonesian-American filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York. His short film, "The Dishwasher," which he co-directed, was awarded a Special Jury Mention at Tribeca 2019 and was later acquired by HBO Max. Another of Nick's films, "Atrophy," a genre-bending story about his mother's fight to recover from a stroke, premiered at Fantasia 2021 and won Best Performance at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.

Let's join my conversation with Nick:

Q: Hi Nick. Great Film.  What inspired you to make this short film? 

A: Hi, thank you for watching my film. I am glad that you have already watched my film two times. … Well… My true greatest loves in life are food and film. After I graduated film school my starving artist job was actually as a line cook in fine dining restaurants in New York and San Francisco. Perhaps my connection to food allows me to see meaning and stories where other people can’t.

Q: Why is the title Daly City?

A:  “Daly City,” named after the city I grew up in, is an autobiographical story about my family and our experiences immigrating to this country from Indonesia. The story follows my mother, who is exhausted from work, and buys Chinese takeout to bring to a church potluck and she tells me, “if anyone asks…I cooked this!” The church congregation ends up assuming the dish is some kind of authentic traditional Indonesian dish and they even bring her up on stage to surprise her with an award for the best dish in the potluck! This has always been a funny story that my family loves to tell but as I grew older I realized it was much more complex than I had realized and carries within it many of the ideas I was interested in exploring in myself; ideas like exoticism, the model minority myth and just capturing this feeling we had as new immigrants to this country…the feeling of wanting to fit in, wanting to belong, in all its shades of gray. 

Q: Do you know why food means so much to Asian immigrant kids?

A: I think there’s a reason why so many Asian immigrant kids like myself are so food obsessed. Even though I’ve lost many parts of my Indonesian identity having grown up here, eating and cooking our food has always served as an unbreakable bond to my culture that’s able to transcend distance and even language.

Q: The film is about you when you were 10 years old. What was the most challenging part of transforming your childhood memories into this film?

A: Our greatest challenge was casting our three Indonesian lead actors. To this day, I can only count on one hand the amount of working Indonesian actors that I know in this country. Our Casting Director, Christian Bustamante (The Accidental Getaway Driver), who specializes in street casting and Southeast Asian talent, emphasized from the very beginning that we needed to spread the word within the Indonesian community across the entire country. So I began to reach out to the Consulates, gamelan music groups and dance groups, and Christian was literally on the ground in LA street casting. He was at a CAPE short film screening when he asked if he could come up on stage during the Q&A to address the audience for any leads, and lo and behold, a woman approached him afterwards and said, “You need to meet my son!”, and that’s how we found our 10 year old lead actor, Jett. It took us almost 6 months to find our Indonesian-American cast and I am so proud that we never gave up! We actually shot in the church where the story actually occurred, using church members who were actually there when it happened to play supporting roles. It was a challenging experience for me to cast someone to play myself. This was also my first time directing a child which definitely made me nervous. In the end though, I found that we had so many similarities, having both grown up in this country as Indonesian-Americans, that finding common ground came quite naturally to us.

Q: This is my second time watching your short film. I noticed that your directing style feels similar to the filmmaking style of the ’80s and ’90s. Was that intentional, since the film is set in the ’90s?

A: We didn’t have the money to do a true period piece but I thought that we could use the different elements of cinema to create a nostalgic 90’s vibe. For instance, we shot the movie in 4:3 aspect ratio, our costume designer chose outfits that were inspired from my family photos from the 90’s, the color grade is soft and warm to conjure up the feeling of memory and nostalgia, and there isn’t a single phone in sight!

Q:  With this film, you’ve become the first Indonesian-American filmmaker from Brooklyn to be nominated for an Academy Award at the 2026 Oscars. How does it feel to represent your cultural roots in this film? And what do you hope will come after the nomination announcement?

A: I was born in Indonesia and came to this country when I was quite young. We were working class and my parents knew nothing about applying to colleges, especially film school. My sister and I did the model minority thing and got good grades and financial assistance to continue moving up the ladder. For me though, the higher I climbed the lonelier it felt, in a way, and “Daly City” allowed me to reconnect with my Indonesian community and Asian American community. I found a lot of power in that and the experience has been quite nourishing. I have even begun playing music with a gamelan group in NYC and I’m developing a feature film that explores my ancestry.

Q: How long did the production take, from developing the idea and writing the script to post-production editing?

A:  Almost 3 years ago, I was invited to submit to a short film competition sponsored by Tribeca and Netflix. “Daly City” made it to the final round but did not end up winning. My Producer and I felt that we had done all the work to prepare the movie for shooting already so we should just push forward and make the film ourselves. It took about a year to raise the money, a year for pre production and production, and about 3 months for post production. There was a point early on when I was about to say yes to a full time job being a Creative Producer (which promised health insurance and a lot of stability) but suddenly Clara, my Producer, called me and said she secured a sizable portion of our budget. It was a huge fork in the road moment for me and I am so glad that I decided to take the risk and follow the path of making “Daly City.”

Q: What are your tips for filmmakers who want to create a film based on their own childhood stories?

A: Challenge yourself to write honestly about your experiences. We all have an image that we would like to present to the world but I would challenge you to identify the flaws in yourself and your characters, and to reflect on what those flaws tell you about yourself. A character's sins are much more revealing than their virtues. 

Q: Besides film festivals, where can people watch your movie?

A: We will be having our Online Premiere on Short of the Week Mid  November. The film is also currently available to Academy members on the Academy Screening Room.

Q. Where can people contact you?

A: Please visit my website  www.nickhartanto.com/dalycity or you can just reach me on my IG @nickhartanto, @dalycityshortfilm and on Facebook too. You can also watch the film online, just go to www.shortoftheweek.com and find Daly City.

The judging process for films submitted for Oscar consideration will take place in early December. If it passes the selection, Daly City could become a nominee.

This is a work by a Brooklyn filmmaker that brings pride and helps advance New York's film industry.

Blog Written by Naratama (November) / Photo Collection of Daly City Photos.