Zi (2026) – Review and Summary (Sundance)
Like most Kogonada movies, Zi is for select audiences, and while visually sometimes like a fever dream, the characters and dialogue can be as blurry as the title character’s future.
Spoiler Alert: This summary and review contains spoilers.
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“Zi” Film Details
- Director(s): Kogonada
- Writer(s): Kogonada
- Runtime: 1 Hour(s) and 39 Minutes
- Public Release Date (Film Festival – Sundance [More Coverage Of The 2026 Film Festival]): January 29, 2026
- Genre(s): Drama, Young Adult, LGBT+
- Content Rating: Not Rated
- Primary Language: English
Movie Summary
Something is going on with Zi. She feels disconnected from the present, her future feels blurry, and it is unclear what, if anything, might be physically wrong with her. Enter Elle, someone once an expat, but now seemingly an immigrant in Hong Kong, who is drawn to Zi. The feeling is somewhat mutual, as Zi believes she saw Elle in a vision. But whether it is just Zi grasping onto something which is so foreign it has to be real or trying to make what she believes is a vision a reality, it is hard for anyone to say.
Cast and Characters
Zi (Michelle Mao)
- Character Summary: Zi, recently becoming an adult orphan, is struggling with feeling detached from the world. It makes her present fuzzy, and her future just as unclear, leaving her to wonder if something is physically wrong with her as she finds herself drifting throughout Hong Kong.
Elle (Haley Lu Richardson)
- Character Summary: At one time, Elle dreamed of becoming a dancer, but without encouragement through booking jobs, the dream began to die, and while not dead, it is becoming clear it isn’t a feasible career. Dismayed by that, Elle seems to be looking for something new to come to love, and she left her home country to truly have a fresh start.
Min (Jin Ha)
- Character Summary: Min, having felt disconnected in his own way, due to his parents sending him to boarding school, found a sense of home through Elle. But, as she experienced a need for rapid growth and to establish her own stability, it seems the love that used to tie them together became suffocating. So now Min waits and hopes that by remaining accessible and solid, it might be enough for Elle to revisit their romance.
Review and Commentary
On The Fence
How Zi Portrays Longing and Feeling Lost [73/100]
Zi is the kind of film that relies on its setting as much as its dialogue to communicate meaning. The camera lingers. The environments feel slightly unreal. Zi herself comes across as grounded enough to be believable, yet adrift in a world that feels more inspired by reality than rooted in it. This dreamy distance reflects her emotional state of lost, detached, and moving through life without a clear sense of direction.
That detachment explains why Zi latches onto Elle, even in dreamlike visions where Elle appears more as an idea than a person. Elle represents something tangible: a connection to reality, accountability, and presence. Zi drifts, tempted at times by a life without structure or belonging, but Elle repeatedly chooses her, grounding Zi in moments where everything else feels unstable.
The film’s treatment of longing extends beyond Zi. Her parents are dead, she has no meaningful relationships, and time itself seems slippery for her — a natural consequence of having nothing concrete to look forward to. In that sense, her dreams feel less indulgent and more like survival mechanisms. When reality offers no traction, the mind fills in the gaps.
Elle’s struggle mirrors this in a more familiar way. Rejection has made her dreams of becoming a dancer feel unattainable, and the combination of youth and dwindling hope is jarring. The film taps into a quiet but pervasive anxiety: the idea that life’s greatest milestones must be front-loaded, and that if you’re not fulfilled by your mid-20s or early 30s, you’ve somehow failed. Even Min, the most stable of the trio, feels stuck. Without Elle as part of his future, his life reads as automated, functional, but empty.
As a foundation, this is all solid and relatable. The film is clearly interested in that uncomfortable transition where childhood dreams fade, and adulthood offers little guidance in return. You are deemed old enough to figure things out, but rarely given the tools, grace, or reassurance to do so.
Where Zi falters is in how it chooses to express these ideas. The film leans heavily into an artsy, atmospheric style, using extended scenic moments that slow the pacing without deepening the emotional impact. These pauses don’t feel like space to process what’s been said or experienced; instead, they often register as padding. Like moments that exist less to serve the story than to stretch the runtime beyond short-film territory.
The intentions remain clear. Zi longs for someone stable and consistent and projects that need onto Elle. Elle, in her own state of transition, finds comfort in being someone’s anchor rather than a drifter herself. Min, unable to secure anything lasting with either woman, clings to fleeting moments of feeling wanted to carry him forward until something more permanent presents itself.
You understand the heart of Zi. That’s not the issue. The problem is how much excess surrounds it. With so much stylistic weight pressing down on relatively simple emotional beats, the film often feels more exhausting than immersive, making its exploration of longing land with diminishing returns.
Overall
Our Rating (73/100): Mixed (Divisive)
Zi, like much of Kogonada’s work, captures the beauty of a place and treats it as a living, breathing presence. However, as with After Yang, the film prioritizes visual depth over emotional investment in its characters. The result is a movie filled with people who are likable and occasionally relatable, yet remain distant, making the experience more about observing the world they inhabit than truly connecting with them within it.
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