Not since David Farrier and Dylan Reeve Tickled (2016) have I seen such a bizarre, consistently surprising documentary as Sandi Tan's Shirkers, the story of one of the first indie Singaporean films, the starry-eyed girls who made it, and the creepy American man who stole it all from them. (Haven't seen Three Identical Strangers yet. Don't @ me.) It's both a detective story of what happened and a ghost story mourning childhoods, dreams, and lives long lost or murdered. It's at once a self-interrogation of director Sandi Tan's foibles as a friend and filmmaker and a ghastly screech at the predatory man who used (and perhaps abused) her and threw her away on a whim. And sorry Orson Welles, but this is the best documentary of 2018 examining the surreal production of a long-lost film decades in the making. And can we please crowdfund a full restoration of Shirkers complete with reconstructed audio track? I want this more than the completion of every single unfinished Welles project out there.
Rating: 8/10
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