Mark Reviews Movies: FOUND (2021)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 19, 2021

Who knows what life would have been like for the three teenage girls at the heart of Found. All of them were born in China, during country's decades-long one-child policy. All of them ended up in an orphanage, and after some period of time, each one was adopted by an American family. There are countless questions in that small gap between each girl's birth and her placement in an orphanage, and all of them are difficult to consider.

The story behind director Amanda Lipitz's documentary involves the filmmaker's own family, although one probably wouldn't be able to tell that from the film itself. Lipitz's brother and sister-in-law adopted Chloe, one of those three girls, when she was just over a year old. Some filmmakers might make this information a prominent part of the documentary, but here, Lipitz remains silent on the subject (This critic only learned this piece of trivia from the press notes). In retrospect, the director's silence is the first sign of how generous Liptiz is in and with this film.

It's not her story, after all. It's Chloe's. It's the two other girls' tale. It belongs to the girls' adoptive parents, the woman who tries to find the three girls' birth parents, the nannies who cared for the girls in the orphanages, and the families who gave up one child or more in order to adhere to China's policy, waiting for word and hoping that one of these girls might be the answer to their own countless questions. Liptiz doesn't get in the way with her own narrative and perspective, and if that absence is a selfless act, it is also an act of love.

There is so much love in this film, despite the political background and humanitarian crisis that led to its story needing to be told. It easily could have condemned China's policy, which only ended in 2015 (increasing the limit to two children) after 35 years of implementation, but the film instead treats it as a fact—a terrible one with multiple repercussions, yes, but one with a history that cannot be changed.

Like the documentary's three subjects, Lipitz is looking for answers, reason, and catharsis within the reality of this situation. It's astounding how much of all of that exists within every step of the girls' journey. Such things are difficult for them to see, since adoption comes with a slew of mysteries and doubts and insecurities, which this film examines and addresses in ways that usually are overlooked or wholly ignored in movies covering the subject. Watching as these girls find each other and see how cared for they were and are and will be in the future, though, we witness all of that.

The story begins with 13-year-old Chloe and her bat mitzvah in Jerusalem. She and her parents believe it's time for Chloe to learn and know more about her familial origins and national heritage, so she does an at-home genetic test. One surprise is how many biological relatives are found by way of the test, but the biggest is that Chloe has at least one cousin, who also did one of those tests, living in the United States.

She is Sadie, who lives in Tennessee, while Chloe has recently moved from Seattle to Phoenix, and is about Chloe's age. The two start speaking via online video chats, and then, there's yet another surprise. A third cousin, named Lily and living in Oklahoma City, is discovered. She's 17 and waiting for news on college applications. She joins in on the chats.

Liptiz spends time with all three girls, as well as their families, and they talk frankly about their experiences, growing up with white families and being seen as "different" by their peers. They also speak openly, freely, and honestly about those long-held, impossible-to-answer questions about the families from whom they originally came.

All of them are curious to some degree. Chloe and Lily want to find their birth parents, if only to understand why they were given up (The one-child policy offers a reason, of course, but reason doesn't figure into the emotional core of feeling abandoned and/or rejected at birth, whether that reality is true or not), but Sadie is hesitant. Some of it, like for all three girls, has to do with not wanting her adoptive parents to feel some rejection in the search.

Most of it is, perhaps, out of fear for the answer. As Sadie puts it, being adopted isn't how she identifies herself, but it is akin to having a middle name—always there and always some part of oneself, even if you're not fully conscious of it at any given moment. The wisdom of these teens, especially as their search for specific answers leads to unexpected ones, gives us a lot of hope for them, whatever the results of their search might be. The film itself is wise in not letting the girls' search for and the potential discovery of their birth parents define who they are or could be.

All of this leads to an organization in China that specializes in discovering familial connections and, eventually, a trip to the country for the girls. Liu Hao serves as the researcher for Chloe, Sadie, and Lily, and a pleasant surprise is how Lipitz allows this woman, who also felt the cultural effects of the one-child policy (Her grandparents helped with the fine for her parents to keep a second child, but her father treated her as if she didn't exist), to tell her story and explain why she does her job. The same goes for a trio of nannies, each of whom can still remember the girl she cared for at the orphanage until the child was adopted, and the girls' potential families, who want answers as desperately as the girls.

The emotional effect of all of these connected stories, collected with such care and attention, is overwhelming at times—and more frequently as these meetings and reunions keep occurring. Found begins as the search for a specific answer, but the one that Lipitz and these girls find—in a cousin's embrace, a nanny's memories, and a father's suppressed tears—goes beyond that.

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