Denzel Washington has an approach to navigating Hollywood his son Malcolm can’t help but admire.

“If you know anything about my dad, he’s about the work,” Malcolm, 33, tells PEOPLE at Variety’s Creative Impact Awards and 10 Directors to Watch brunch in Palm Springs on Jan. 4.

Denzel, 70, is often “showing up at the award show right before his category,” the filmmaker quips with a laugh. “He wants to do the work. And that’s the life that I’ve always valued as an artist’s life.”

For directing and co-adapting August Wilson’s classic drama The Piano Lesson, Malcolm is among Variety’s 10 Directors to Watch, honored alongside Zoë Kravitz of Blink Twice, Coralie Fargeat of The Substance and more. Now streaming on Netflix, The Piano Lesson was a Washington family affair: Malcolm directed, his brother John David starred and Denzel produced.

The award-winning film is also dedicated to Washington matriarch Pauletta, married to Denzel since 1983. (They share twins Malcolm and Olivia, 33, Katia, 38, and John David, 40.) “She’s been such an influential figure in my life, not only in my rearing but just as an artist herself,” Malcolm tells PEOPLE. “She’s like my hero, you know, [who] I admire. I want to live a life like I watch her live.”

The same goes for Denzel. The two-time Oscar winner has taught Malcolm how to “have a consciousness about you, reflect your moral view in your work, focus and dedicate yourself to the work,” he says.

“What comes after,” Malcolm adds of promoting movies, “is for the people. This part is designed for the people.” 

Given his father’s many accolades, is Malcolm familiar with Hollywood’s awards circuit? “Not at all,” he admits with a smile. What he’s learned from Denzel, he says, is that “this part is fun, traveling and doing this stuff is fun. But it just doesn’t fulfill you, it doesn’t sustain you. The thing that sustains you is speaking your truth, is making work that’s honest… reaching for something that is larger than you.”

Going through that process alongside his brother and father is what made The Piano Lesson such a personal project, says Malcolm. “You’re coming together as a family to acknowledge and honor the parts of your ancestors that came before you and made that possible. The mission was so high and so important and bigger than any of our individual selves. That inspired a kind of coming together and inspired a kind of a community.”