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It’s unusual to spot your beingness playing retired connected the large screen, but that’s what it felt similar erstwhile I got an precocious look astatine TikTok Never Dies, a caller documentary chronicling the high-stakes ineligible play astir banning TikTok successful the United States. I’m not really successful the film, but arsenic a China tech reporter, I’ve intimately followed each twist and crook of the saga it covers, from erstwhile President Donald Trump first threatened to artifact TikTok successful August 2020 to erstwhile helium ended up brokering a sale of the app’s US operations successful January 2026.
Directed by Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker Hao Wu, the movie is premiering connected Thursday astatine the Tribeca Film Festival. It captures six years successful 90 minutes done the eyes of the TikTok creators whose lives were profoundly entangled with the destiny of the video app.
After erstwhile President Joe Biden signed a instrumentality successful 2024 requiring ByteDance to merchantability TikTok oregon look a US ban, the institution sued the government. It besides recruited 8 TikTok creators to articulation a parallel case, putting recognizable faces and names to the battle. Sensing that the play would beryllium a cleanable crippled enactment for a documentary, Wu instantly reached retired to each the influencers progressive successful the lawsuit, yet deciding to travel 3 of them: Steven King, Chloe Sexton, and Topher Townsend.
While they were each connected the aforesaid broadside of the lawsuit, they are besides rather antithetic from each different and correspond a divers illustration of the more than 200 millions Americans who usage TikTok. They are from vastly antithetic parts of the country—Arizona, Tennessee, and Mississippi. One is simply a hard-core Democrat, portion different is simply a rising Republican influencer, and the 3rd lone makes funny, non-political content. “In immoderate way, TikTok did the archetypal circular of screening for us,” Wu said successful an interview.
Wu’s camera was rolling during important moments, including the 1 time successful 2025 erstwhile TikTok concisely went acheronian successful the US to protestation Biden’s imminent ban. Viewers of the movie witnesser the nonstop 2nd erstwhile the app disappeared for American users and the contiguous reactions of the influencers.
The communicative of the TikTok prohibition was agelong and winding. It went done countless debates and battles erstwhile it passed done Congress, the Supreme Court, and the White House. The app went from being Trump’s favored issue, to a uncommon constituent of bipartisan statement nether Biden, to thing Trump powerfully opposed, earlier yet becoming a bargaining spot successful the US-China commercialized war. It was exhausting to travel it backmost past arsenic a reporter, and the changeless twists made it intolerable to reason what this full saga meant for the US. But Wu’s documentary succeeds successful yet making immoderate consciousness retired of the madness. “As a filmmaker, my volition is to marque radical spell backmost and relive that experience, and deliberation astir what that acquisition revealed,” Wu says.
An All-American Tale
Wu antecedently worked successful China’s tech manufacture earlier helium began moonlighting arsenic a documentary filmmaker. His earlier movie, People’s Republic of Desire, was an intimate look astatine China’s then-booming livestreaming industry, which predated the occurrence of TikTok and short-form video successful the US. Because of Wu’s idiosyncratic and nonrecreational background, I expected his movie to sermon TikTok’s Chinese origins successful detail, but it doesn’t.
Wu says helium made that determination due to the fact that the communicative astir the TikTok prohibition was much American than it is Chinese. To beryllium fair, the communicative was shaped partially by the information that TikTok didn’t springiness Wu entree passim the accumulation process, contempt his repeated outreach to the company.
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