SXSW Review:
"Finding Yingying"
Release Date: N/A
Rating: N/A Running Time: 97 minutes “I always put my faith in people to help find the way. It turns out that’s only true in China,” wrote visiting scholar Yingying Zhang in her diary soon after she arrived in the United States in 2017 to study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The disappointment and frustration Zhang expressed in her writing proves hauntingly prescient in Finding Yingying, a tense and heartbreaking documentary that earned debuting director Jiayan “Jenny” Shi this year’s SXSW Special Jury Recognition for Breakthrough Voice. On June 9, 2017, the 26-year-old Zhang disappeared from campus grounds. Three weeks later, the FBI arrested former physics graduate student Brendt Allen Christensen and charged him with kidnapping Zhang. For Shi, Zhang’s abduction was deeply personal. Shi and Zhang not only attended Peking University but Shi was a journalism student at the UIUC at the same time Zhang was enrolled at the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences. Shi participated in the search for Zhang and served as a translator for Zhang’s family during their terrible ordeal. “I also started documenting the place Ying had been to and I hope one day [the] footage would help them in some way,” Shi notes early into her horrifying account of Zhang’s disappearance. While Finding Yingyinganxiously unfolds as a mystery, Shi’s main goal is to celebrate the life and dreams of a smart and gifted young woman against the backdrop of the search, investigation, and subsequent legal proceedings. Shi often reads directly from Zhang’s diary, an invaluable resource that not only provides significant insights into Zhang’s state of mind and experiences in the United States but gives us a true sense of who she was as a person and as a student. Shi also has unfettered access to Zhang’s friends and family, who all fill in the gaps left by Zhang’s diary with crystal-clear clarity and emotional honesty. She allows Zhang’s parents and her fiancé an outlet to share their not just their love for Zhang but also their distress. “Americans won’t give up on my daughter, will they?” Zhang’s mother asks. It is difficult to determine whether participating in the documentary is as cathartic for them as it appears to be for Shi, but they certainly make you feel that this is an important vehicle for keeping Zhang’s memory alive. Given Shi’s voice dominates Finding Yingying, it is not a surprising that the documentary quickly reveals itself to be a canny study in the American legal system from a restless outsider’s perspective. Zhang’s parents constantly express their fear and anger with the investigation and the prosecution of the prime suspect. They often have good reason to be concerned. It is a very slow-moving process, one that inflicts much pain on the victim’s loved ones. At the same, Finding Yingying leaves American viewers with the strong impression that the Chinese legal system is less interested in the rights of the accused and is more prone to a rush to judgment. “Yingying and I both came to U.S. for our dreams. Now she is here forever, her dream unfulfilled,” Shi sorrowfully notes at the end of her documentary. Zhang’s dream may be unfulfilled, but thanks to Shi, she will not be forgotten. Robert Sims Posted: April 9, 2020 Web site: https://schedule.sxsw.com/2020/films/2023486 |
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