Finding Yingying

Synopsis

Special Jury Award, SXSW

In April 2017, idealistic Chinese student Yingying Zhang came to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to study agriculture. Six weeks later, she went missing. Filmmaker Jiayan “Jenny” Shi chronicles the circumstances around her disappearance and its devastating consequences on her family, friends, and community. All the more resonant and timely in the wake of rising anti-Chinese sentiment in the U.S., Finding Yingying is at first an intriguing mystery and, ultimately, a haunting and heartbreaking exposition reflecting the state of current U.S.-Chinese relations.

“Finding Yingying is also a deft portrait of a family on the razor’s edge between hope and dread — precarious emotional terrain that the superb score, by Nathan Halpern and Chris Ruggiero, ably expresses.” –Hollywood Reporter