After the Snowmelt review – a fatal disaster in a snowstorm leads to devastating act of remembrance

After the Snowmelt review – a fatal disaster in a snowstorm leads to devastating act of remembrance

Yi-Shan Lo returns to Nepal to follow the route of her best friend’s ill-fated hike in a harrowing but cathartic documentary

A work of deep personal reckoning, Yi-Shan Lo’s debut documentary feature begins with closeups of the filmmaker's own footsteps as she trudges through a snow-covered landscape. Her uneven motion mirrors the rough path of the film itself, which confronts a tragic event. In 2017, Lo was set to join her best friends Chun and Yueh on their trek across Nepal when she suddenly fell ill; she chose to stay behind while the other two continued. Disaster ensued: the pair went missing during a severe snowstorm and were not located for over 40 days. Yueh survived, but Chun died from starvation combined with hypothermia.

Struggling to understand these occurrences, Lo meticulously reconstructs the days before and during her friends’ disappearance. She examines old text messages, Chun’s journals, and footage captured by the Nepali rescue team. These records provide some insight into the ordeal, as well as the pair’s backgrounds. Delving into her personal archive, Lo recalls her developing friendship with Chun at their Catholic girls’ school, where he defiantly resisted the institution’s strict dress codes. Given Chun’s efforts to express his non-conforming identity and his use of male pronouns, it is even more tragic that he was repeatedly misgendered in death by various news reports.

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