Shirkers

In 1992 in Singapore, a young woman makes an independent film with her friends. It is called Shirkers, and when shooting ends the American mentor who had been guiding them takes every reel of negative and disappears. Twenty years later the cans come back, silent: the picture survived, the sound did not. Sandi Tan builds this documentary on that recovered footage and braids two stories, the lost film itself and the question of who the man who stole it actually was. The real subject is less theft than how a young person's admiration gets used. It won the directing award at Sundance and stands as a rare record of independent filmmaking in Singapore. Who it is for: viewers interested in film history and personal documentary. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a straight crime narrative, since this is a reckoning rather than an answer.