TikTok Never Dies

Official Selection, 2026 Tribeca Film Festival
Official Selection, 2026 Austin Asian American Film Festival

Being on TikTok once felt like being dropped into the center of a party where everybody likes you. That is, until the tongue-tied disbelief of January 19, 2025 when the app was taken away, only to return days later.

Hao Wu’s new documentary, TIKTOK NEVER DIES, follows the viral Chinese app’s legal odyssey in the United States: on one side, 170 million avid American users fighting to save what was their emotional refuge and, for some, financial livelihood; on the other, the US Congress moving to ban TikTok over national security concerns. And this is only the beginning of the story.

An intimate observer of both the US and China, Wu (76 Days, SDAFF ‘20) now explores their intersection, offering a timely reflection on geopolitics as experienced by the individual, specifically three TikTok influencers at the film’s center as the battle makes its way to the Supreme Court. Revealing divides and unexpected allyships, Wu’s TikTok saga asks questions of democracy, power, and where our joy and our purpose lie in the age of social media.

– Alice Zheng