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1982 film by Wayne Wang

Chan Is Missing is a 1982 American independent comedy drama film directed, co written, produced and edited by Wayne Wang. It is his solo directorial debut. The film, which is shot in black and white, is plotted as a mystery with noir undertones, and its title is a play on the Charlie Chan film series, which focuses on a fictional Chinese immigrant detective in Honolulu. It is widely recognized as the first Asian American feature narrative film to gain both theatrical distribution and critical acclaim outside of the Asian American community. Chan Is Missing turns the Charlie Chan detective trope on its head by making "Chan" the missing person that the film's two protagonists, Jo (Wood Moy) and Steve (Marc Hayashi), search for. In the process of trying to locate Chan, a fractured, even contradictory portrait of him emerges, mirroring the complexities of the polyglot Chinese American community that Chan's character allegorizes. In 1995, Chan Is Missing was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Jo is a taxi driver in Chinatown, San Francisco who, with his nephew Steve, is seeking to purchase a cab license. Jo's friend Chan Hung was the go between for the transaction but has disappeared, taking Jo's money. The two men search for Chan by speaking with various Chinatown locals, each of whom has a different impression of Chan's personality and motivations. The portrait that is created is incomplete and, at times, contradictory. As the mystery behind Chan's disappearance deepens, Jo becomes paranoid that Chan may be involved in the death of a man killed during a "flag waving incident" between opposing supporters of the People's Republic of China (mainland China) and the Republic of China (Taiwan). In the end, Chan remains missing but, through his daughter, returns Jo and Steve's money. Jo, holding a photo of Chan where his face is completely obscured, eventually accepts that Chan is an enigma, saying in a voiceover, "here's a picture of Chan Hung but I still can't see him."

Wayne Wang's primary distribution goal was to have the film, "play at festivals and college campuses", and as one of the first Asian American feature films, audience reactions to it spanned a spectrum of responses, sometimes dependent on the ethnicity of the viewer. One Chinese American viewer claimed the movie was written for a white audience because " there being so much explaining, so many footnotes " says Lem. Also according to Sterrit we see that " its initial audience has not been an ethnic one, Chinese viewers are being wooed through newspaper ads " Furthermore, the Asians were ‘wooed’ to watch the film by the white reviewers who reviewed the movie in the Asian press, therefore raising questions about whom the film catered to. Peter X Feng believes the success of this movie was through "the art house audiences and brought the Asian Americans into the theaters." He also states that "reviews in the Asian American press often simply advertise the screenings; but the lengthier reviews usually refer to how white reviewers see Chinese Americans and how Asian American texts are received by non Asian audiences." Wang arranged for the film to be screened at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) where it premiered as part of the New Directors/New Films series on April 24, 1982. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times awarded the film 3 out of 4 stars and wrote that the film is "whimsical treasure of a film that gives us a real feeling for the people of San Francisco's Chinatown" and it "has already become something of a legend because of the way it was filmed" that it demonstrates a "warm, low key, affectionate and funny look at some real Chinese Americans" and went to say "almost without realizing it, we are taken beyond the plot into the everyday lives of these people." Vincent Canby of The New York Times said in his review that "Chan Is Missing is not only an appreciation of a way of life that few of us know anything about; it's a revelation of a marvelous, completely secure new talent." A review by Dennis Schwartz stated that, "It's breezy and warmly done, a low key comedy that takes you into an ethnic group that has rarely been captured on film in such a revealing way. A true Indy film, and a delight." The film won 'Best Experimental/Independent Film' at the 1982 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards.

In 1995, Chan Is Missing was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".