Finding Yingying doesn’t try to offer answers that it can’t manifest in reality, and instead allows the legacy of its subject to lead the way, through intimate diary entries, by pondering the important questions of who we want to be...

| Jan 9, 2024

Giving voice to her for the final time, Finding Yingying bittersweetly commemorates a life tragically cut short.

| Jun 5, 2021

First-time director Shi highlights the reverberating effects of trauma with breathtaking tact in the type of humane storytelling that is only possible when the observer becomes a participant in the unfolding narrative.

| Feb 20, 2021

In a landscape of prurient, exploitative true crime films and television, Finding Yingying stands out for the compassion and delicacy with which it handles its story.

| Feb 8, 2021

Finding Yingying brings humanity to the often stale true-crime subgenre while also giving us a unique perspective from someone on the outside of the American justice system.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 12, 2021

This film is evocative of both the sting of cultural dislocation and the eerie ease with which lives can vanish in wide open American spaces.

| Dec 29, 2020

Finding Yingying is ultimately a work of compassion and necessity...

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 28, 2020

The answers the documentary finds are not easy, but the loss Finding Yingying depicts is one that will reverberate for years to come.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 14, 2020

While it can't decide what type of documentary it wants to be, this glimpse into a missing-persons case involving a Chinese scholar and her desperate family remains emotionally captivating.

| Dec 12, 2020

Shi's clear, strong voice, instinctive use of personal archival materials and crisp storytelling elevates Finding Yingying... mystery and an empathetic journey as Zhang's family comes to the United States to look for their missing child.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Dec 11, 2020

Even at its most scattered though, "Finding Yingying" is haunting, largely because it's so personal.

| Dec 11, 2020

"Finding Yingying" is conventional and not averse to cliché, particularly via a brooding score that takes too many notes from the true-crime playbook. But its sensitive, sincerely affected director knows a moment of grace when she sees one.

| Dec 11, 2020

The film captures [the] ordeal with compassion and a measure of self-reflexivity, which is as much as this unavoidably grim material could ask for.

| Dec 10, 2020

It's this focus on the victim rather than the killer and his crimes that elevates Finding Yingying.

| Nov 19, 2020

...an accomplished and heartfelt film that drops a real bombshell in the final third.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Nov 8, 2020

It's remarkable how Finding Yingying gets away from the traditional framework that governs how these stories are told, allowing the Zhangs to be seen separately from the horrific situation they find themselves in...

| Nov 5, 2020

Shi's tender documentary suggests their daughter is a lot closer than she once seemed.

| Original Score: B | Nov 5, 2020

An intense and heartbreaking work that tenderly tells the story of Yingying Zhang.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Oct 26, 2020

Compelling, heartfelt, and just as frustrating to watch - Finding Yingying not only makes for one of the most essential watches of the year but also for the sake of much-needed change.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 26, 2020

Shi's Finding Yingying should come with complimentary napkins. It's a sad story, yet an even more fitting tribute.

| Oct 23, 2020