'Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi'
Director: Neal Broffman
Synopsis: Sunil Tripathi, a music student of East Indian descent at Providence's Brown University, goes missing after battling depression. So his family puts up notices on social media to try to find him. A month later, there's a bombing at the Boston Marathon and the media posts pictures of two suspects. One looks somewhat like Sunil, so online viewers immediately jump to the conclusion that Sunil is a Muslim terrorist who had disappeared to plan the bombing of the marathon. His family is tormented by online haters. But they can't believe Sunil could possibly be the bomber.
Scorecard: 9 (out of 10). This documentary by a team of journalists with a background at CNN tells its story journalistically and cinematically with so many good elements, it's a textbook for documentary filmmaking. They don't hit us over the head with the exposition, they let it unfold like a novel. A friend says Sunil didn't want a backup plan in life; he only wanted to be the best saxophonist possible. Then they show footage of Sunil reading "The Fountainhead" – the Bible of individual achievement and personal responsibility. Next they show him losing interest in school and falling into a depression before disappearing. Finally, all hell breaks loose over the bombing of the Boston Marathon and everyone tries to figure out what went wrong. The film examines depression as a physical illness and the responsibility of the media, but it has a harder time addressing personal and societal responsibility. It doesn't accept suicide as a choice for someone who perhaps couldn't achieve his dreams and it doesn't demand the same ethics for users of the Internet as it demands from old media. One of the best things about the Internet, says a young man, is its unrestricted freedom. But that's also what gives it the potential for horrifying abuse.
Bruce Fessier
