A woman gazes wistfully at the camera, her jet-black hair obscuring her face as it whips around in the wind. It’s an image that Zi, Kogonada’s dreamy new sci-fi drama that just premiered out of Sundance Film Festival, keeps returning to, over and over again. Is it a half-remembered memory? A vision of the future? Or maybe both?
This is the question upon which Zi hinges its curious sci-fi plot, in which a woman finds herself experiencing visions of her future self. But the film’s whisper of a plot and its spontaneous structure allows Kogonada to plumb the dreamy, existential cinematic depths that his films have always explored so well, making Zi feel like a welcome return to form after the director’s big, ungainly swing with last year’s A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. And while Zi is almost too slight to feel substantial, it is, inarguably, unforgettable.
