They Think I'm Chinese!
2011 · 52m · Canada
Directed by Nicole Giguère
Genres: coming-of-age, documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
Five young Quebecers — Alice, Lea, Julia, Anne and Flavie — from the first wave of Chinese adoptions in Québec in the 1990s navigate adolescence and the transition to adulthood while questioning identity and difference.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A straightforward identity doc about adoptees—exactly the kind of earnest, consensus-friendly project that scouts line up for. I'd need to see what formal risk Giguère takes to make this feel like anything other than the compassionate PSA it appears to be.
Giguère positions herself within a lineage of intimate ensemble portraiture and the expanding documentary tradition around transracial adoption; the measured pacing allows each voice its own weight rather than collapsing five stories into one neat narrative arc.
The decision to let five separate subjects unfold at their own temporal rhythm—never cutting between them for false urgency, never settling for a unifying thesis—is what transforms this from advocacy into genuine portraiture; it's a structural restraint that costs nothing and changes everything.