Zi — Sundance Review

Zi feels like a return to form for Kogonada after last year’s A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, but it doesn’t quite have the charm of his debut Columbus (2017) or even the similarly sci-fi After Yang (2021). It feels more like an experiment than a film. Seven people flew to Hong Kong for a few weeks to shoot this project on a whim, and it very much feels like a film that was made on the fly. What’s admirable about this experiment is that Kogonada gave all seven of them equal equity in the film, so they’ll be splitting the profits equally. It will almost certainly be a polarizing film; I only wish it felt more like a story driven by passion and thoughtfulness than spontaneity and impulsivity.