Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi

This heart-wrenching documentary follows the family of missing Brown University student Sunil Tripathi as they frantically search for their son. In the days following his disappearance, Sunil's parents, siblings, and numerous friends set up shop in Providence, Rhode Island, to launch a wide-reaching campaign to bring him home. But their weeks-long mission is derailed when Sunil is named a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing in April 2013, as they become the target of vicious libel and even threats from anonymous online vigilantes who are convinced that their son is guilty. While tracing their personal plight with clear-eyed sensitivity, director Neal Broffman also takes pains to examine the role of social media, from Reddit to Twitter, in shaping the discourse surrounding such tragic current events—sometimes for the public good, but all too often for the worse and even the fatal. (Denver International Film Festival)