Finding Xiao
feature documentary (currently in production)
assistant director
Produced by
Directed by Tessa E. Osborne
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“Finding Xiao” follows Xiao on the journey of reconciling with herself and her identity as a Chinese American adoptee who has struggled her entire life with one question: “What makes us, us?”
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Xiao embarks on this healing path by reflecting on her hard, long-winding, and dark memories with mental health issues when she started to understand what adoption truly means. And the truth was much darker than what Xiao has always envisioned as a fairytale. This realization sent her into a spiral in 2020, being hospitalized for mental illness two times in one year with one failed suicide attempt. But, being in the deep end did not mean there was no way out.
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Over the next few years, Xiao did, and is still doing the hard work to reconcile with her identity. In the documentary, she first speaks to her adoptive parents about the complicated nature of love, racial differences, adoption and identity with unfiltered rawness. Simultaneously, Xiao reaches out to adoptees around the US through Facebook groups to hear their stories and figure out how they have come to terms with it, if they have. This story beckons the question of what makes us truly us, is it the place we’re from or the place we are now?
