Searching

Aneesh Chaganty’s film follows David Kim, a father whose 16 year old daughter disappears and who searches through her accounts. It all happens on computer, phone and security camera screens. The 6 minute opening montage builds 16 years of family history from desktop windows, home videos and photos, so the audience knows this family before the girl disappears. The cutting works through cursor moves and window switches, and the tension comes as much from what David deletes as from what he types. Production was the opposite of the result. Filming took 13 days; preparation, editing and animating the screens stretched the rest across two years. Before the shoot Chaganty cut a feature length reference version with himself in every part and showed it to the crew the night before day one. At Sundance in January 2018 it won the NEXT Audience Award and the 20,000 dollar Alfred P. Sloan Prize, given to a feature about science or technology. John Cho turned the part down at first; it became the first mainstream Hollywood thriller carried by an Asian American lead. A good fit if you are curious about storytelling where cursor moves and window switches replace the cut. Not for you if you want close ups, depth of field and a sense of place; the camera never leaves a device.