I don’t know where to start – Shirkers is an absolutely astonishing film and something I was not expecting at all. When I heard about Sandi Tan’s documentary, I was anticipating an interesting but otherwise inconsequential, film about an unsolved mystery and a filmmaker in search of the answers that have eluded her for years, as well as a semi-autobiographical ode to the world of cinephiles. What I was not expecting was to be so completely blown away by this film, a film that doesn’t only tell the story of the titular film and its subsequent disappearance that serves to be the central mystery, but a sweeping odyssey about a series of concepts, ranging from the tangible and realistic to the abstract and metaphysical essence of being. Sandi Tan has crafted something unlike anything I have seen before – an unprepossessing, humble documentary that doesn’t incite much enthusiasm in the viewer before they watch it, but leaves us cerebrally ravished and emotionally broken by the end, moved to something very close to emotional nirvana. This is not just a film – it is a soaring work of art, a truly resonant piece of cinema that questions everything we hold dear, and makes us wonder about the possibility that everything we know could quite possibly be false information, and that perhaps we don’t even know our homes, our friends and even ourselves as well as we think we do. While it may seem hyperbolic and perhaps contradictory to the very spirit of artistry, this is a perfect film.

Shirkers takes the form of an account of a period in the life of the documentary’s director, Sandi Tan in the early 1990s. At the age of only 18, she and her film-loving friends Jasmine Ng and Sophie Siddique, made one of Singapore’s first independent films, a road movie by the title of Shirkers, guided by the hand of their enigmatic film teacher, Georges Cardona, who directed the film from Tan’s screenplay, and imbued the film with his apparently broad knowledge as well as his alleged external experience in the world of cinema. The film was a powerful representation of a country in flux, showing the growth of industry in a nation that was bound to succeed through their strong values and unimpeachable quest to be seen as exceptional. Shirkers was a passion project for everyone involved, in particular for Tan, who found her life consumed by this film, ensuring that every detail (even those that would not be obvious to the audience) was perfectly placed into this film which was an attempt to demonstrate the artistic brilliance lurking in a nation where such expression wasn’t always clear. Eventually it was completed, and the girls went their own separate directions while Georges stayed behind to edit the film and produce a final product that would represent the meticulous labours of this group of young cinephiles – only to disappear, to abscond with the film, with his proteges never hearing from him again, with the exception of occasional correspondence that did not give them any information or indication as to his whereabouts, or the whereabouts of their film. Twenty-five years later, Tan goes in search of the truth, embarking on an odyssey to find Shirkers and more importantly, to understand why it was taken away from her so suddenly years before, uncovering the truth about Georges, and discovering a great deal about herself along the way.

There are so many reasons I absolutely adored Shirkers – first and foremost, this film is a love letter to cinema, and in particular an ode to the young people who grew up captivated by the work of writers, directors, producers and actors of yesteryear who stimulated our childhoods and made us fall in love with the film industry as a whole. Tan does not spare any expense in representing her cinematic influences, as well as those of her collaborators. As the great postmodernist scholar Roland Barthes remarked in one of my favourite essays on authorship and the creative process, “the text is a tissue of quotations, drawn from “innumerable centres of culture” – and throughout Shirkers, we are privy to the influences of various other artists on the making of the small independent film that forms the basis of this documentary – to list all the filmmakers referenced throughout the film would be impossibly redundant (and would spoil the surprises for anyone who has yet to see this film), but Shirkers – both the original film and this documentary – were heavily inspired by the work of others, but rather than taking some form of cinematic essay, it is an intricate cinephilic odyssey, a journey through the mind of a few dedicated film-loving teenagers that compensate for their youthful naivete with cinematic knowledge that goes well beyond their years. In many ways, I felt this is precisely where Shirkers captivated me the most – I saw myself reflected in these characters, and I could identify with the hunger to create that these individuals felt. I was also obsessed with the French New Wave. I too wanted to make a sweeping epic about themes much larger than myself, with any resources I can find. Shirkers is not particularly effective on its own – it requires some deep-rooted semblance of artistic audacity in the viewer – anyone who has or has ever had the urge to create something artistic will identify with this film, and the central mystery will strike a chord for those who found it difficult to achieve those naive aspirations of our younger days, putting aside daring youthful dreams for stability and security, a necessary sacrifice many have to make. Shirkers is a film I assume many of us can identify with – an endearing visual poem to the relentlessly enchanting and beguiling dangers that lie within the world of cinema.

However, Shirkers goes far deeper than this, and it doesn’t simply serve to be a fascinating account of a group of young filmmakers who find themselves in a precarious position – it is a documentary that breaks the boundaries of what the form can represent, blurring the boundaries between the subject and the creator. One of the great documentarians of our time, Errol Morris, was notorious for detaching himself from what is being represented on screen, always allowing the subject to take the central focus – this is essentially the core of the majority of documentaries, where the filmmaker is just a vessel, the facilitator for the story that he or she is telling. Shirkers is a very different kind of documentary, and it reminds me a great deal of the films of Agnès Varda, in particular, her trilogy of extraordinary late-period documentaries (The Gleaners and I, The Beaches of Agnès and Faces Places), which were not highly-audacious projects that intended to show world-changing events, or issues far larger than the scope of a singular individual. Shirkers is a deeply personal work, and much like Varda, Tan gets heavily involved in this story – which is understandable because the story is obviously about her, which makes Shirkers more of a visual autobiography rather than a traditional documentary. Tan’s voice can often be heard off-camera during interviews, other individuals openly interact with Tan, many of which overtly call her out on her egocentrism, both in the past during the making of the original film (which could be argued to be nothing more than a vanity project from an audacious young woman), and in the present, where she is revisiting a part of her life through the making of this documentary. The almost sacred boundary of the documentary, where the filmmaker needs to remain detached and allow the story to form naturally, is deconstructed beautifully throughout Shirkers, creating an uncanny but enthralling experience that challenges notions of the traditional documentary and evokes the idea of a more experimental filmmaking process.

The most imperative aspect that one can take away from Shirkers is that the filmmaker is not shown to be some sacrosanct deity, some unimpeachable artistic visionary that cannot be questioned – rather, the filmmaker is presented as a flawed individual that has a particular artistic vision that sometimes doesn’t manifest into something entirely palpable. Shirkers is a critique of the artistic vision, and we go on a voyage of discovery with Tan, who takes us on a cross-continental odyssey to find answers. This underlying intention is not one that is particularly innovative – but when we consider that this entire film’s impetus was based on the personal quandaries of Tan, who sought to find answers to the questions that plagued her, you understand why it can be misconstrued as being self-indulgent. If this documentary had not been made, no one other than those involved with the film would have known about the existence of Shirkers – yet, it is presented as being so important, and the loss so tragic, the audience cannot help but mourn the loss of the film just as much as those involved. Tan may be accused of exploiting a temporal moment in her past for the sake of this film, but its made acceptable when we realize that this isn’t a film about only the filmmaking process it – it a portrayal of artistic angsty, and the way the art tends to consume the artist, enveloping them, and in the rare occasion that the art is lost, there can be serious ramifications for the artist, which Shirkers seeks to explore through its riveting and often extremely eerie narrative.

Some people may question the significance of Shirkers – it is certainly not a film about a great tragedy, nor some pressing socio-political or economic issue, and its importance is proportional to the extent to which the audience can identify with this story. The intention of making Shirkers wasn’t to demonstrate how the original film would have redefined cinema – it was simply a low-budget independent film made by a few youthful cinephiles and their mysterious teacher. Therefore, why should we care about Shirkers and its eventual loss? Mostly because this is a compelling story, a film that takes a fascinating story and presents it through the lens of the individuals closest to it. It is not a conventional documentary about the making of a film – it is a metaphysical odyssey into the artistic process, as well as the foregrounding of the nation of Singapore, a country undergoing a rapid change between the 1980s and early 2000s. Shirkers is a film about questions that don’t have any answers, a depiction of countless problems without resolution. Yet, it never feels unsatisfying or frustrating, but rather instils a sense of blissful wonder into the viewer, who is experiencing this fascinating story through the eyes of the people who were most directly influenced by it.

Calling Shirkers an incredible film is a massive understatement, and I am already confident in proclaiming this one of the year’s very best films (it might even be the very best, as no other film this year has left me this shaken). Sandi Tan didn’t merely make a film – she made a cinematic collage that blends the past and the present into a masterful odyssey of self-discovery. Focusing on the events of this film from the perspective of the people that made it or were closely involved in the making of it creates the sense that this is less of an objective account of the making of a lost film, and more of a metaphysical meditation on individuality and the interplay between the art and the artist. Shirkers is a nuanced, deeply-personal work of an artist who takes the uncomfortable and uncertain journey into the past to try and find answers to questions that have persisted in her mind and the mind of her friends, in the hopes of resolving the mysterious nature of their youthful collaboration. It has an extraordinary resonance, and the emotional impact of this film is powerful and undeniably authentic and results in a film that could quite possibly be called absolutely perfect.