Shirkers

Created by zinester teens Sandi Tan, Jasmine Ng, and Sophie Siddique, along with the much older Georges Cardona, the 1992 film Shirkers was to be a road-trip adventure filled with kooky characters and striking locales, a fever-dream time-capsule of pre-boom Singapore that could credibly be called a premonition of auteurs like Wes Anderson and a sibling of early Gregg Araki. But the film never made it past the editing booth. In a fit of creative jealousy, Cardona made off with the 16mm reels and held them hostage for many excruciating years. Directed by Tan with an unflinching eye, this Sundance-blessed 2018 documentary reflects on the fallout of the betrayal. The narrative around “greatest movies never made,” such as Herzog’s The Conquest of Mexico and Jodorowsky’s Dune, is one of visionary artists versus the bureaucratic studio system, broken relationships, and the outsize egos of mostly male creators. Shirkers adds a new perspective to this canon, one that is still complicated by gender, money, access, and power. —Josephine McRobbie