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."

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The absence, ambiguity, and lack of definite character in the film are central themes in Chan Is Missing, and reflect how the film takes on the challenge of being an early Chinese/Asian American feature narrative. Chan Is Missing is able to use the absence of Chan to fill that space with a series of a broad and complicated portrait of San Francisco's Chinese American community. According to Diane Mei Lin Mark, who wrote the framing essay for the movie's published screenplay, "this very presentation of diversity among Chinese American characters in a film is a concept largely untested in American movies." The diversity is addressed in the film in at least two ways. First, there is Chan himself, who every character seems to have a different impression of. In a voiceover monologue at the end of the film, Jo explains, "Steve thinks that Chan Hung is slow-witted, but sly when it comes to money. Jenny thinks that her father is honest and trustworthy. Mrs. Chan thinks her husband is a failure because he isn't rich. Amy thinks he's a hard-headed political activist...Presco thinks he's an eccentric who likes mariachi music." Chan, it would seem, is meant to stand in for the Chinese American community as a whole.