They Think I'm Chinese

For this intimate and revealing National Film Board of Canada documentary, Nicole Giguère spent several years filming five adopted Chinese girls, including her own daughter, Alice. Due to China's one-child policy, 7,000 Chinese children—98% female—have found new homes in Quebec. Giguère first began filming Alice, Julia, Flavie, Anne, and Léa when they were children; here she concentrates on their teen years and passage toward adulthood, starting with a 2007 tour in which four of the girls visited their homeland. The trip includes a stop at the orphanage in Hunan where some began their journey to the West. None are obsessed with meeting their birth parents, so a subsequent lack of contact information doesn't cause disappointment. As they move through their teens, the girls display the usual concerns about boys, grades, and body image. After graduating from high school, they go on to college, travel abroad, and fall in love, but life is harder on some: Léa suffers from an eating disorder and Flavie ends up in a juvenile facility (she also acknowledges a problem with drugs). Over time, Léa develops a healthier relationship with food, but admits that she can't predict the future, while Flavie bypasses college for the independence of work. As the film draws to a close, all five seem to have found some degree of stability in their lives. Interestingly, the girls are ultimately more vested in finding themselves as young Canadians than as Chinese-born immigrants. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (K. Fennessy)