On TV: WO AI NI (I LOVE YOU) MOMMY

Coming to POV on August 31: WO AI NI (I LOVE YOU) MOMMY

Stephanie Wang-Breal’s moving debut film premiered at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival in March before claiming the US Feature Grand Jury Prize at Silverdocs in June.

WO AI NI follows the adoption of an initially shy and reserved Chinese eight-year-old, Fang Sui Yong, by a Long Island Jewish couple, who name her Faith. While Wang-Breal shows the young girl’s initial meeting with her adoptive mother Donna in China, the film spends over a year and half on Faith’s assimilation – made difficult by her complete lack of knowledge of English, and the adopted family’s similar ignorance of Mandarin or Cantonese. As the months pass, the audience witnesses Faith’s rapid transformation from a tantrum-throwing, culture-shocked child to a very self-aware American pre-teen, and sees both the troubling and heartening effects of transracial international adoption.

indieWIRE has a profile of director Stephanie Wang-Breal for their FUTURES column here.

Update: POV writes about the film here.

To find out more about the POV screening on PBS, click here.