Lucky Lu

Fresh from Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, Lloyd Lee Choi’s first feature pulses with the desperate plight of an immigrant gig worker whose fate is tied to a stolen e-bike.

Like so many immigrants living in New York City, Lu (Chang Chen, The Assassin, MIFF 2015) works as a food-delivery driver, seeking to scrounge together enough cash to pay for a new apartment before the long-awaited arrival from Taipei of the wife and daughter he hasn’t seen in five years. But when his e-bike is stolen, he’s thrown into a frantic search for both the missing vehicle and the money he needs now that his only source of income has been taken from him.

With shades of Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist classic Bicycle Thieves – as well as MIFF 2024 stand-out The Story of Souleymane, Sean Baker’s Take Out and the films of the Dardenne brothers, whose Young Mothers screens at MIFF this year – Lucky Lu is an electric drama about the stress and hustle of life on the margins in a late-capitalist society. Lloyd Lee Choi adapts his Cannes-selected short Same Old (MIFF 2022) into a debut feature film, shot entirely in Manhattan’s Chinatown and Lower East Side, that nerve-rackingly captures the sacrifices and precarity embedded into the gig economy.

“Anchored by a magnificently empathetic turn from Chang Chen … a gripping, moving portrait of an immigrant gig-worker's desperation and resilience.” – Variety