Coming to Al Jazeera America this Sunday, February 14: HELP US FIND SUNTIL TRIPATHI
Neal Broffman’s exploration of a missing man’s unexpected intersection with social media made its debut at Atlanta last year, where it won the Audience Award. It went on to screen at Hot Docs, New Orleans, DMZ Docs, Brooklyn, Boston Asian American, St Louis, Denver, and Oxford, among others.
After Sunil Tripathi, a Brown University student suffering from depression, vanished without a trace from his apartment late one night, his family is desperate to locate him. As detailed in Broffman’s sensitive retelling, they methodically spread Sunil’s story and his picture as far and wide as possible, garnering attention from traditional and social media in the hopes that someone, anyone will recognize their family member and provide a lead. Despite this initial interest, with no one coming forward, the story soon died down. While the family wished for a resurgence of interest, they were soon faced with more media coverage than they wanted when Sunil is inexplicably linked to a grainy photo of one of the Boston Marathon bombers. Through the virality of the Internet, rampant speculation on reddit soon crosses over to the mainstream media, and, despite zero official corroboration, their beloved, lost family member is declared to be a terrorist and murderer, with threats lobbed at him and his relatives from all directions. This cautionary tale demonstrates the dark side of so-called citizen journalism and Internet activism, their infiltration of traditional news, and a young man and his family who are caught in its wake.
what (not) to doc 