- Director
- Jiayan Jenny Shi
- Rating
- n/a
- Running Time
- 98 minutes
- Release Date
- n/a
Overall Score
Rating Summary
For those who didn’t already know, this year’s SXSW was cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak. We at KLM are still here to do our part to help cover films slated to appear at this year’s festival. To keep up with our latest post-SXSW coverage, click here.
In June 2017, Chinese-student Zhang YingYing disappeared on the campus of Illinois university, never to be seen again. She was an aspiring scientist, obsessed with studying and learning as much as she could so she could give back to others. Finding YingYing is a documentary that uses interviews with law enforcement and volunteers, along with security footage to paint a cohesive picture into YingYing’s abduction and subsequent search for her. The film delves into the mystery surrounding her disappearance, allowing the audience to understand just how special of a person she was.
For filmmaker and journalist Jiayan “Jenny”Shi, the story of Finding YingYing hits close to home. Shi and YingYing studied at the same school in China together before transferring to the United States in search of more opportunities for themselves. By using YingYing’s diary as a narrative function throughout the film, Shi provides wonderful insights into Zhang’s life, showing the viewer that she was a graduate student full of optimism and hope regarding her future. This fact is summed up by the motivating last line in her diary, “life is to short to be ordinary.â€
Immediately after Zhang’s kidnapping, Shi documents her family’s initial reaction and the hope they latch onto that she is still alive. The film covers the 2+ years from Zhang’s kidnapping to the jury trial of her killer. Shi does this by transitioning between the United States and China with the Zhang family. The documentary films the familial tensions and grief inherent in losing a child in an intimate and uncompromising way, always allowing emotion to seep through the screen (a specific moment of heated tension between YingYing’s mother and father was quite nerve-inducing). The subtext is also rife throughout Finding YingYing, as her family tries to navigate the cultural differences that they are not accustomed to, especially when it comes to American criminal trials.
In the end, Finding YingYing is an engrossing documentary highlighting the vibrant life of Zhang YingYing, an incredible person and student whose life was taken from her way too soon. For more information about the case, click here.
*still courtesy of film site*
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Big Star Wars Nerd. Love all kinds of movies, but my favorites are sci-fi, indies, and superhero films. I created SplittingEdge Reviews with my friend Dakota, because we love expressing our views on the different kind of music and films that are out there. You can give me a follow on Twitter: @CorbinStewart12 or Instagram: corbin_stewart
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