What is the film about?

Ambiguous Losses is about transnational adoption, memory, migration and roots, and, more importantly, sisterhood. The animated documentary’s core is a candid discussion with my adoptive sister, where we explored and discussed our adoption archives together for the first time.

A film from the Alambic program, the NFB French Animation Unit’s creative lab for emerging filmmakers.

What influenced it?

Image: NFB

Growing up away from adoptee communities and then reconnecting with these roots as an adult
after moving to a big city, I felt the urge to address these themes in a creative documentary to
hopefully reach those who didn’t have that chance to reconnect. This was why interviewing my
sister was so important to me; she has never really reached out to adoptee groups or Asian
communities.

My main film inspiration was Madeleine by Raquel Sancinetti, for the way it swings back and forth
between an emotional, dreamlike world and reality. It was crazy to me to actually have her as an associate producer on the project because her film was so influential on my approach to
documentary.

A little background information...

Image: NFB

As adoptees, archives are all we have of our birth country and our past pre-adoption: legal and
medical papers, a few photographs maybe. This is why using their materiality was so important to
me. I am deconstructing the past, reconstructing memories, filling in and dreaming in the gaps…

My adoptive parents recorded a lot of footage during my adoption trip. Hours of images that were
somehow mine but not really, that depicted me but that I don’t remember. The film is me making
them my own and attempting to connect the dots between the past and the present.

How was the film made?

With a lot of sweat and tears! Ambiguous Losses was made in six months, from research to DCP,
through the Alambic mentorship at the National Film Board of Canada in Montreal. The film was
made with a mix of techniques, mainly using paper cutouts animated directly under the camera
and scanography to create analog glitches frame by frame. It was challenging because I was
using these techniques for the first time!

Image: NFB