You don't have to be a rocket scientist to make a movie, but writer director Lloyd Lee Choi is almost on the way to his two-week premiere "Lucky Lu" on May 19 in Cannes.

“I entered Ryerson University’s Aeronautical Engineering at the age of 17 and was on the verge of being near, but at the last minute, I had an existential crisis,” Choi revealed. “I think a lot of Asian American kids and immigrant kids (like me) can be linked together. It would have been a very safe, comfortable life, but it didn’t feel anything at all, so I applied to a freelance art school in Vancouver and ended up living with all the film students in the dorm.

Another moment of change for Choi was the random discovery of the Brazilian drama "City of God" by Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund. Like Lucky Lou and his favorite filmmaker, the Darden Brothers, it explores the lives of the working class and the “marginal people” of society. "It shocked me, opened the door for me and let my story be told outside my bubble," he said. "Well, not exactly: "My parents had that classic immigration experience, and there wasn't much to come here," he added. “They have run a convenience store for many years and my grandfather worked a lot of blue collar jobs to survive, so I really understand the busyness and the desire to raise children for my kids.”

It all tells Choi's portrait of Lu (played by 2018 Cannes juror Chang Chen), a portrait of a New York City immigrant whose fragile survival as a deliveryman collapses when his e-bike is stolen. In a race against time, Lu searches for his bike and money to pay for the new apartment as his wife and daughter arrive from Taipei.

Choi, a South Korean-backed Canadian in Toronto, has many advertisements, who moved to New York in the years before the pandemic. "The city basically survived the delivery of food, and the drivers were suddenly considered essential workers," he said. "So when I saw all these different faces handing over the food. I began to imagine the sacrifices they made to feed the city, but also to survive." It inspired Choi's 2022 Palme d'Or-nom-nom-nom Short "same old" and he adapted to "Lucky Lu." His short-term "closed dynasty" in 2023, another Gotham story involving poverty, won top awards at Berlin, SXSW, AFI Fest and other festivals.

"Lucky" is compared with Vittorio de Sica's 1948 Italian neo-realistic drama The Bicycle Thief, whose sorrow, suspense, some common plot points and emotional moments in the relationship between the protagonist and the young child. It took Cui two months to find Carabelle Manna, 7-year-old who plays Lu's daughter queen. "She has never taken any action before, but I'm glad we took the opportunity," he said. "She really made a movie." During the cold 22-day shooting, photography also captured the dark grit in Chinatown.

Choi was rejected by WME (also a domestic representative of the film and an international representative of the film constellation) and Canopy Media Partners, and he had at least two movies on his sleeve. The first one is probably a sports drama for the underdog, “The Story of Korean-American Fathers, tells the rise and fall of the prodigy golfer.” Another is a mysterious thriller and portrait born in South Korea, focusing on another deliveryman. But don't expect Choi to deviate from his dramatic independent roots. He laughed and said his golf movie was "aligned more with something like 'Whiplash' than "Happy Gilmore."