IMDb RATING
7.3/10
5.7K
YOUR RATING
A woman explores the events surrounding a film she and her friends began making with a mysterious stranger decades ago.A woman explores the events surrounding a film she and her friends began making with a mysterious stranger decades ago.A woman explores the events surrounding a film she and her friends began making with a mysterious stranger decades ago.
- Awards
- 8 wins & 31 nominations
Jasmine Kin Kia Ng
- Self
- (as Jasmine Ng)
Georges Cardona
- Self
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaIn 2018, Sandi Tan premiered her film at the Sundance Film Festival and earned the World Cinema Documentary Directing Award. She was the second Singapore-born filmmaker to win. (The first went to another Tan: Kirsten Tan, for Pop Aye, the previous year.)
- ConnectionsFeatures The Girl Can't Help It (1956)
Featured review
Why should we care?
This documentary came highly recommended from sources I trust and is either praised to the rafters or leaves the viewer completely indifferent. I can understand why people clicked with this movie; I'm not confused why they enjoyed it but the euphoric reviews baffle me. For my part I found it sappy and trivial.
The documentary follows a woman, talking 20 years on, trying to piece together a lost film from her childhood in Singapore. The result is it's terribly self-important for someone who made two short films. Great documentaries, no matter how intimate or grand the subject, convince the viewer they're talking about something important. This element is missing. The film they were making didn't even look promising. To me it's no less vain and uninteresting to watch your average student filmmaker wax lyrical about their creative process but somehow this has more importance ascribed to it because... it's an older person saying it? There are great examples of documentaries about personal drama, about relationships, about the making of movies, yet this one lacked the punch and relevance of -any- of those.
The documentary also mentions Werner Herzog's film Fitzcarraldo - that film spawning the sweeping making-of documentary Burden of Dreams. Unintentionally this only serves to remind me of a filmmaker who actually did something noteworthy with their craft.
I will say as a documentary itself, it has a pleasing aesthetic and I can find no real technical faults. This is perhaps owing to the original film's film stock that nowadays evokes nostalgia in its viewers. This film also benefited from its audience seeking it out; it mainly attracted people who would enjoy this and I thought I'd be in that group. I'd be interested to see how a larger audience would react to this.
Ultimately it's the life story about someone who's not that interesting to listen to; a tale of a friendship that's not endearing; a making-of of a movie that didn't look good to begin with. Although what happened is terrible and unjust, it must unfortunately be admitted that the film world was at no great loss without that film and probably wouldn't be without this one.
The documentary follows a woman, talking 20 years on, trying to piece together a lost film from her childhood in Singapore. The result is it's terribly self-important for someone who made two short films. Great documentaries, no matter how intimate or grand the subject, convince the viewer they're talking about something important. This element is missing. The film they were making didn't even look promising. To me it's no less vain and uninteresting to watch your average student filmmaker wax lyrical about their creative process but somehow this has more importance ascribed to it because... it's an older person saying it? There are great examples of documentaries about personal drama, about relationships, about the making of movies, yet this one lacked the punch and relevance of -any- of those.
The documentary also mentions Werner Herzog's film Fitzcarraldo - that film spawning the sweeping making-of documentary Burden of Dreams. Unintentionally this only serves to remind me of a filmmaker who actually did something noteworthy with their craft.
I will say as a documentary itself, it has a pleasing aesthetic and I can find no real technical faults. This is perhaps owing to the original film's film stock that nowadays evokes nostalgia in its viewers. This film also benefited from its audience seeking it out; it mainly attracted people who would enjoy this and I thought I'd be in that group. I'd be interested to see how a larger audience would react to this.
Ultimately it's the life story about someone who's not that interesting to listen to; a tale of a friendship that's not endearing; a making-of of a movie that didn't look good to begin with. Although what happened is terrible and unjust, it must unfortunately be admitted that the film world was at no great loss without that film and probably wouldn't be without this one.
helpful•1810
- pelopen3bc
- Jan 26, 2019
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Details
- Release date
- Countries of origin
- Official site
- Language
- Also known as
- Shirkers: Bộ Phim Bị Đánh Cắp
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime1 hour 37 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.78 : 1
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