Documentary film “Finding Yingying” focuses on the undeniably heartbreaking human aspects of one real-life missing case. Yingying Zhang, a graduate student at University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois who was only 26 at the time of her missing, is a plain but smart and spirited young woman full of hope and possibility, and her sudden disappearance on one day of June 2017 surely devastated a lot her family and others close to her.

The case came quite close to director/co-producer/co-cinematographer Jiayan “Jenny” Shi Shilin, a Chinese documentary filmmaker who was incidentally also studying at University of Illinois during that time. Shortly after when the missing of Yingying Zhang was reported, Shilin and many other students actively participated in the search for Yingying during next several weeks, and Shilin subsequently followed the desperate efforts of Yingying’s family members and friends.

The early part of the documentary focuses on how hopeful Yingying was about her academic career in the future. After graduating from Peking University in China just like Shilin, Yingying went to US for more study, and that was how she came to University of Illinois. Although she could not help but feel lonely or depressed due to being alone in the middle of a world very alien to her in more than one aspect, she still did not lose any hope and optimism of hers at all, and it is often poignant to observe that via the occasional reading of her personal diary in the documentary.

On that fateful day of June 2017, nothing seemed to be particularly wrong for Yingying and her several fellow Chinese students. Once she had a brief meeting with her landlord in the afternoon for signing a lease for her current residence, she was supposed to join her friends after that, but, to her friends’ befuddlement, she did not appear even in the evening, and they accordingly became quite concerned about whatever might have happened to her.

As the subsequent search for Yingying was continued without much progress, Yingying’s friends came to fear for the worst, and so did her family. Her father soon came from China along with her aunt and her boyfriend (Her mother happened to be not so well at that time, by the way), and the whole university kept trying to search for Yingying, but there was still not any helpful clue to her whereabouts.

In the meantime, the local police also tried as much as possible for finding Yingying, and then there eventually came a breakthrough, though that was not a good news for Yingying’s family and friends at all. Considering what was captured on several surveillance cameras during that day, it was quite possible that Yingying was taken away to somewhere by an unidentified person, and it was also very likely that she was already dead if she was not being kept by that person in question.

Now this sounds like your average true-crime documentary, but, instead of resorting to any kind of cheap sensationalism, the documentary keeps focusing on not only the emotional pain and devastation of Yingying’s family and friends but also Yingying’s life and personality. She was a good daughter to make her parents proud. She was a wonderful girlfriend to her boyfriend. She was a dependable big sister to her younger brother. Above all, she was a promising young woman who could achieve and fulfill a lot after graduating with her doctoral degree.

And that is why the big hole left by her sudden disappearance feels so hurtful to her family and others close to her. At one point, we come to see how much Yingying’s parents have put up with each other a lot for years for supporting their dear daughter, and there is a very painful scene where they clash with each other due to Yingying’s growing absence in their life. In case of Yingying’s boyfriend, he is relatively calmer on the surface, but he is also clearly devastated by her disappearance, and that is why he kept standing by her suffering family to the end.

In the meantime, the investigation on Yingying’s disappearance gradually gained momentum after the local police finally came to find the prime suspect. I will not go into details here, but I can tell you instead that what followed next during next two years was quite frustrating for everyone who cared about Yingying’s disappearance. Although Yingying’s family got the closure at least after suffering so much, that big question hovering over the case remains unanswered to some degree even at this point, and that causes more pain and sorrow for them.

On the whole, “Finding Yingying” is a documentary of haunting qualities to linger on your mind for a long time. Shilin, who received the Special Jury Award when the documentary was shown at the SXSW Film Festival early in 2020, handles her main human subjects with enough care and respect, and Yingying comes to us as a vivid human being to remember even though she is mainly presented via her words and a number of video clips and photographs. In short, this little but intimate documentary is one of most powerful ones I encountered during last several years, and I assure you that you will not easily forget Yingying after watching it.