Justin Lin Returns to His Indie Roots With Last Days

Director Justin Lin has been working on Hollywood blockbusters since joining the Fast & Furious franchise in 2006, with his films—including five installments of Fast & Furious and 2016’s Star Trek Beyond—earning more than $3 billion worldwide. He’s known for high-octane spectacle and handling big-budget, global projects with large ensemble casts.

So it may come as a surprise that his latest film, Last Days, is quite the opposite of all that. The independent film, which will have its world premiere at Sundance on January 28, is based on the true story of John Allen Chau (played by newcomer Sky Yang), an idealistic Christian missionary who attempted to make contact with the Sentinelese, an isolated tribe living on an island in the Indian Ocean. It’s a fascinating story exploring one young man’s desire for connection, and a meditative exploration of the relationship between father and son. Last Days ended up being a very personal project for Lin, forcing him to examine his own choices as a father while exploring how family and societal pressures shaped this one young man’s life and death.

It’s smaller and quieter than the franchise fare Lin’s been working on for the past two decades, bringing him back to his indie roots—and to the Sundance Film Festival, where his breakout debut, Better Luck Tomorrow, premiered back in 2002. It also brought him back to the challenges of making an independent film. “We went through this whole [struggle], not uncommon for an indie movie, of how to get this film made,” says Lin. “I felt like we hit every roadblock possible, but the thing that I learned and love about independent films is that the currency is passion.”

Chau’s story made international headlines in 2018 after it was reported that the 26-year-old had made it to the isolated North Sentinel Island, only to be killed by the tribespeople who lived there. Lin remembers being deeply affected by Chau’s death as he struggled to understand why this young Asian American man who had his whole life ahead of him would make that choice. “That’s just a kid, that’s somebody’s son, that’s somebody’s brother,” he tells Vanity Fair. “And I just did not feel good. I didn’t feel good about my reaction to it, and it really stayed with me.”

Lin was just as affected by Alex Perry’s 2019 article in Outside magazine, which traced Chau’s last days. Much of that story focuses on Chau’s father, Patrick, who immigrated to America and joined a Christian church in hopes of fitting in. The article details how Patrick tried to pull his son back from his dangerous ambitions, but at the same time felt responsible for bringing Chau into the church in the first place. “Patrick was the way in for me, because he’s an immigrant and I’m an immigrant, and I know this idea of assimilation as an Asian American,” says Lin, who came to the US from Taiwan at the age of eight.

Lin and screenwriter Ben Ripley tried to keep the story small. But over the years—as their attempts to get financing waxed and waned—the film grew bigger in ambition and scope. Last Days toggles between Chau’s final days and his formative years as he attempts to find a path for himself. Lin and Ripley also added a fictionalized character named Meera (played by Radhika Apte), an officer off the Indian coast who is racing against the clock to track down Chau and stop those who are helping him make the illegal trip to the island. “I would say Meera’s worldview is the closest to my worldview, and I think her journey, in many ways, is my journey,” says Lin. “I had a very strong reaction to John’s actions, but what was so alien to me, after doing all that research and really delving in for two years, I felt like it wasn’t that far from me.”

Lin knew that to make this story work, he’d have to find the right actor to play Chau—but the director never expected to find his star the way he did. In 2023, Lin attended a screening of Better Luck Tomorrow at the BFI in London. There, he met a young man named Sky Yang who was doing a spoken word performance before the screening. “At that point, I was working on the script and I’m like, ‘He looks just like John Allen Chau, and he’s great.’ And I’m like, ‘No, this is too easy,’” he says. When it came time to cast, Lin set out on a worldwide search, and Yang’s résumé came across his desk. Though the casting process was rigorous, it soon became clear that Yang was the right choice.

Yang, a British actor who appeared in 2023’s Rebel Moon, was deeply committed to the role, jumping on a plane to work on an Oklahoma farm in a bid to better understand Chau’s upbringing. He also traveled abroad, just as Chau did, to understand his character’s deep desire for adventure. “I think the prolonged period of trying to get this film up to production really helped us,” says Lin. “It was really amazing, because I felt like he was living it at that point.”

In the end, Lin realized that the production would have to grow bigger to capture Chau’s global adventures (which Chau chronicled on his Instagram account and in his journal entries). Lin ended up filming for 38 days, cramming in shoots across Thailand, the UK, Iceland, India, and central California. “It ended up requiring my crews from around the world on all these films to come in and really help me bring it to life,” he says. In the end, Last Days merges Chau’s early experiences on intimate, character-driven indie films with his ability to create powerful visuals from unique global settings that he honed on his blockbusters.

At the center of the story remains Chau’s relationship with his father, Patrick, played in the film by Ken Leung. Lin says working on Last Days has made him not only a better filmmaker, but a better father. “I feel like as a parent I’m always doing things wrong,” says Lin, whose son is now 15. “You don’t want him to feel pain, so you’re always trying to impart wisdom. But what I’m learning is that they’re just not going to be ready until they’re ready.”

Sundance has been a pivotal part of Lin’s journey, ever since he arrived at the festival as a 30-year-old with his debut Better Luck Tomorrow—which critic Roger Ebert famously defended from a heckler. Now 53, Lin admits not that much has changed. “I like to think that I’m more mature and I feel different. But talking to you now, I feel like I’m a kid again, because when you care and you want to connect with people, you become vulnerable. That’s the thing about being a filmmaker,” says Lin. “As much as I don’t like it, I’m glad I still have that.”

This feature is part of Awards Insider’s exclusive Sundance 2025 coverage.