Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Grasshopper Film releases “Zi” in select theaters beginning Friday, November 6.
A violinist from Hong Kong who is losing her grip on reality, young Zi (Michelle Mao) is haunted by visions of her own future. The doctors at the local neurology center suspect that she may be suffering from the early symptoms of a brain tumor, but Zi – who is in a pure cinema, with half-formed memories of films like “La Jetée” and “Cléo from 5 to 7” – has to wait 24 long and lonely hours for the results of the tests to return.
Well, maybe not therefore lonely Crying on one of the countless concrete steps that climb Lantau Island, Zi is comforted by a sweet American expat with a familiar face (and an unnaturally aggressive blonde wig). Her name is L, she is a disgruntled former dancer played by the luminous Haley Lu Richardson, and she can’t help but echo the inexplicable closeness that Zi feels towards her. Over the course of one night together, these two lost souls help each other move through time – to re-synchronize with the world around them, reconnect with the infinite potential of today, and return themselves to the creative purpose that once anchored them.
Even if seen without a shred of context, it would be obvious to anyone that “Zi” was made by someone who – or hopes there were – desperate to realign his own. To tear himself away from regret and worry and connect his gaze back to the present. Shot without a script or budget immediately after “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” that Kogonada did not receive (the auteur’s studio debut “After Yang”, by all indications a brutal experience for an artist whose previous two features retained the delicate grace of the video essays he used to make), this informal experiment represents the first investigator who has quickly declined after a scale big misstep, but “Zi” takes the “one for me” attitude to much bigger and sharper ends than usual.
This isn’t just a filmmaker trying to get back on track, he’s a filmmaker struggling, naked finding a way to fall back in love with filmmaking itself. A way to prove that he could still get love back. (Kogonada described the project to IndieWire as “a retreat, as well as a pursuit.”)
While the prospect of watching Kogonada do that naturally intrigues those who have watched him get to this point, the undeveloped nature of this film – the stolen footage and its recurring shape give the impression of someone trying to cut their ultra-sentimental holiday photos into a coherent narrative – makes one think about the metatextual aspects of its creation. “You feel like your only purpose in life is something, and it doesn’t choose you back,” L spits out at one point. “What are you going to do with that? I had to get away from him. That’s why I came here. Getting away.”
Since she arrived in Hong Kong, she has used to collect sounds in almost the same way that Kogonada has come there in search of images. They both find discord around Victoria Harbor that reflects their inner feelings of alienation and alienation. It is China, but it is not. It is one city, but one split across two main areas by the sea that some never cross. It is among the most densely populated cities in the world, but the terrain seems to be largely unfit for human civilization, and nature continues to assert itself between all the skyscrapers, shopping malls, and cracks in the pavement. Zi is the only indigenous character in the film, but the history and design of Hong Kong also reflects her disquiet – like her, the former British colony’s knowledge of the present is delayed.
That’s the closest to a diagnosis we can get for what concerns her, although it’s clear that Kogonada leans more towards soft science fiction than hard medicine. “Timely love” is how ex-witness L Min (Jin Ha) describes it, although he is slow to reveal what he knows about Zi’s condition. Everything she sees is already in the past. I guess that’s true for all of us to some extent, if you consider the nanoseconds that pass between stimuli and our ability to see, but the situation is more obvious for Zi (who Mao plays with the constant helplessness of a paper plane). Of course, that doesn’t explain why she thinks she’s testifying against her to come herself, but that insult only makes the feelings she has at a distance from today worse.
Even in its more platonic dimensions, the packed story that allows Zi to gradually close that gap is full of the romance of loss, reconciliation, and belonging. Kogonada is falling back in love with the movies right before our eyes, and yet, in a typical way, that process is neither garish nor forced. It is his vision that is revealed by careful removal – by cleaning away all the dust and smudge that has come to hide it.
While Kogonada finds some legible influences for his cinematic forebears (the most obvious of which is a step-printed homage to Wong Kar Wai, and the furthest thing I have is a mischievous nod to José Luis Guerín’s “In the City of Sylvia”), he and cinematographer Benjamin Loeb almost entirely maintain that most foreigners in Hong Kong looking forward and exotic in Hong Kong. to be captured in idiosyncratic handheld imagery that evokes the anxiety of the moment and devolves the heavy emotional lift to a wonderfully arranged soundtrack of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s remixes and originals.
In the end, “Zi” builds a special emotional connection towards and between its characters, all of which build up to a small, unexpected bump at the last minute. But even the last-minute reveal – not so much a plot twist as a sudden change in scene – is rooted more in the film’s form than its plot, as Kogonada’s characters remain largely symbolic of their work in the writer-director’s journey back to himself.
It’s a testament to Mao, Ha, and especially Richardson – who is still so good at grounding Kogonada’s most abstract ideas in a tender human space – that “Zi” maintains even a soft and impressive appeal while finding the present, although its recurring nature was definitely not designed with casual listeners. If you’re frustrated, which I wasn’t, or frustrated by, I was, that may have less to do with a real emotional connection to these characters than with the ever-growing benefits of watching someone rediscover the sound of their own voice, and hear a way forward in the future in its echo.
Grade: B
“Zi” premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Grasshopper Film releases it in select theaters beginning Friday, November 6.