Shirkers (2018)

Shirkers is a very personal documentary. Sandi Tan is an honest and open storyteller. The strange music coupled with the grainy film images without sound make for a mesmerizing and mysterious tone. Sandi, Jasmine and Sophie are actually really funny, and as students of the cinema there are abundant references to film history. Today, they have separated but they all work in film in one way or another. Tan and her two friends and her teacher set out to make an indie road movie in 1990s Singapore, a first for the island whose film industry has now further developed but was nascent at the time. Shirkers, the movie that could-have-been, is a poetic take on Catcher in the Rye (and dare I say there is a tinge of Donnie Darko too). Now that she has the footage, she theoretically could start post-production and fulfill her dream, but instead with this documentary, she ended up with a more interesting and meditative movie on dreams, power, time and the movies.