Both emotionally potent and cinematically striking, #AfterTheSnowmelt is a dazzling and unconventional documentary where a filmmaker explores their first experience of great loss after her best friends Chun and Yueh go missing. Trapped in a cave in Nepal for 47 days, Yueh survives. Chun does not.
1/
Yi-Shan offers an intimate window into the complex relationship of survivors as she traverses the intricate terrain of grief and gender with Yueh.
Their conversations are steeped in themes of guilt, perseverance, and identity as they navigate Chun’s legacy with ease, even as elders around them fail to acknowledge their friend’s queerness/transness posthumously.
2/
Interweaving poetry, interviews, and poignant excerpts from Chun's final letters, After the Snowmelt retraces the steps of the hike that the director was supposed to be on. She encounters places and people that last saw her best friend, offering both solace and catharsis to those who bear witness to her journey.