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Winner of the Directing Award for World Cinema-Documentary in Sundance, “Shirkers” is a rather unusual, but quite captivating film about a kidnap, not of a person but of a film. Let us take things from the beginning though.

The film starts with Tan’s own story, from her birth in Singapore in 1972 to her growing up to be a cinephile and a writer of fanzines, along with another friend who shared similar, “unusual” for the country tastes, Jasmine Ng. The two of them eventually attended one of the first film classes in the country, headed by a rather mysterious individual, Georges Cardona. He quickly mesmerized the girls with his stories about Hollywood and his connections, and he had a particular deep impact on Tan, who even went on a road trip to the Us with him. A bit later, and with the help of Sophia Siddique, another classmate, the three...

In Sandi Tan’s documentary “Shirkers,” her friends, Jasmine Ng and Sophia Siddique Harvey, are very direct in their criticisms about Tan, with Jasmine even calling her “an asshole” several times. But that didn’t bother Tan one bit: “It was the way we talked and that’s the nice stuff!” In our recent chat with her (watch the exclusive video above), Tan elaborates, “It was very important for me to capture that reality. If you’re making a documentary, it shouldn’t be airbrushed or the fake version of reality.” Part of what helped her get these honest reactions from her friends was her choice to hire Iris Ng, who’s very small, as her cinematographer. Iris’s small stature allowed her to “vanish behind the camera” and make the subjects of her interviews feel very relaxed in speaking to her.

“Shirkers,” which is currently streaming on Netflix, chronicles...

There’s a reason why you may not have heard of filmmaker and novelist Sandi Tan until this year, upon the release of her brilliant Netflix documentary “Shirkers.” In 1992, Tan and her friends Jasmine Kin Kia Ng and Sophia Siddique Harvey sought out to make an experimental, surrealistic, art house film titled “Shirkers,” with their film teacher, mentor, and friend Georges Cardona.

Continue reading ‘Shirkers’: Sandi Tan Talks Her Brilliant New Doc And Her Love Of Tim Burton & Leos Carax [Interview] at The Playlist.

Every good horror story needs a monster, a specter out of nightmares.

In the movie Shirkers the monster is a thief of dreams, robbing the young of their innocence—a scenario all the more disturbing because this horror story is real.

Sandi Tan is both director and protagonist of the Netflix documentary, which retraces her experience as a precocious teenager in Singapore in the early 1990s. At age 18, Tan embarked on making an ambitious feature film starring herself as a young assassin, a remarkably bold undertaking especially in a conservative place with no cinematic tradition. She enlisted two close friends, Jasmine Ng and Sophia Siddique, to help her on the slasher film, which she titled Shirkers.

“We shot it—on 16mm film donated by Kodak,” Tan has written. “100 locations, 100 actors, including the largest dog in the country.”

The person behind the camera was not a fellow teenager but an adult,...

In 1992, Sandi Tan was a zine-publishing punk teen living on the buttoned-up island of Singapore when she and her best friends — Jasmine Ng and Sophie Siddique — shot one of the nation's first indie features, Shirkers, about a teenage assassin named S. (played by Tan). The trio conscripted their charismatic film teacher, Georges Cardona, to direct, and after shooting wrapped they left the cans of 16mm film with him and returned to their colleges abroad. That was the last any of them would see of him or the film for over two decades.

Cardona became a ghost, leaving ...

In 1992, Sandi Tan was a zine-publishing punk teen living on the buttoned-up island of Singapore when she and her best friends — Jasmine Ng and Sophie Siddique — shot one of the nation's first indie features, Shirkers, about a teenage assassin named S. (played by Tan). The trio conscripted their charismatic film teacher, Georges Cardona, to direct, and after shooting wrapped they left the cans of 16mm film with him and returned to their colleges abroad. That was the last any of them would see of him or the film for over two decades.

Cardona became a ghost, leaving ...

In 1992 Sandi Tan was a teenager in Singapore with a passion for film. She set out with her friends to make the country’s first indie road movie, “Shirkers,” with the help of an American mentor, Georges Cardona. Tan wrote the script and played the lead, a killer known simply as S., in what was to be a homage to the iconoclastic directors she adored. But when Cardona vanished with the footage, it stalled her career. The 16mm cans were rediscovered 20 years later, and Tan decided to make a documentary about the experience to try to “solve the mystery of what happened.” Watch our exclusive video interview with Tan above.

See 2018 Gotham Awards: Full list of nominations led by ‘The Favourite,’ ‘First Reformed’

Growing up in Singapore, Tan didn’t have easy access to the kinds of films she wanted to watch, oddball indies from Jim Jarmusch, David Lynch, and the Coen Brothers.

“Free Solo,” “Quincy,” “Minding the Gap,” “Rbg,” “Three identical Strangers” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” are among the films nominated for the Audience Choice Prize at the 2018 Cinema Eye Honors, an awards show devoted to all facts of nonfiction filmmaking.

“Bathtubs Over Broadway,” “Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.,” “On Her Shoulders” and “Shirkers” were also nominated in the Audience Choice category, which can be voted on by members of the public at the Cinema Eye website.

The bulk of the Cinema Eye Honors nominees will be announced on Thursday, Nov. 8, and the winners will be announced on Thursday, Jan. 10 at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City.

Also Read: 'Free Solo,' 'Minding the Gap,' 'Won't You Be My Neighbor?' Land Ida Documentary Nominations

In the Broadcast Film category, the nominees were four docs from HBO – “Baltimore Rising,” “Believer,” “The Final Year” and...

Cinema Eye Honors revealed the first awards announcements for the organization’s 12th annual awards on Thursday.

Audience choice nominees include recent documentary awards-circuit players such as “Free Solo,” “Minding the Gap,” “Quincy,” “Rbg,” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”

The group also unveiled its list of “The Unforgettables,” honoring notable and significant nonfiction film subjects, such as rock climber Alex Honnold (“Free Solo”), recording artist M.I.A. (“Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.”), Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (“Rbg”), and television legend Fred Rogers (“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”).

Joining the broadcast film category is a new field this year, broadcast series, which features contenders such as Netflix’s “Evil Genius” and “Wild Wild Country,” and Showtime’s “The Fourth Estate.”

In the Heterodox category, recognizing fiction films that actively blur the line between fiction and documentary, The Orchard and MoviePass’ “American Animals,” Magnolia’s “Skate Kitchen,” and...

Sandi Tan’s documentary “Shirkers” — about a mysterious feature film also named “Shirkers” that Tan made as a 19-year-old student — unravels like a whodunit.

This is a documentary about the making of a film that disappeared, pilfered away by one of Tan’s now-deceased teachers, Georges Cardona. The only evidence of its existence was in the minds of the makers and those Singaporeans who held out hope that this storied movie, which would have been the country’s first indie feature, would one day find release.

We do, of course, find that the missing footage has been salvaged; a large portion of this film is comprised of scenes from the original footage played under music and Tan’s voiceover. But it’s the story of how the footage is found, and how Tan and her friends see the film and their old teacher now, that is boundlessly interesting.

Also Read:...

With Sandi Tan’s beautifully cinephilic autobiographical documentary Shirkers arriving in theaters and on Netflix this Friday, October 26, we’re reposting our interview with Tan out of Sundance, 2018. As I wrote earlier in the festival, “Sandi Tan’s debut feature Shirkers is the 26-years-later compromise-of-necessity incarnation of a film that almost was. Shot in 1992, when Tan was in college, from a proudly illogical script of her own devising, Shirkers was meant to be a rare, hopefully transformative Singaporean independent film in a country without much history of those. Directed by Tan’s ambivalently-motivated mentor Georges Cardona — who subsequently absconded with […]...

With Sandi Tan’s beautifully cinephilic autobiographical documentary Shirkers arriving in theaters and on Netflix this Friday, October 26, we’re reposting our interview with Tan out of Sundance, 2018. As I wrote earlier in the festival, “Sandi Tan’s debut feature Shirkers is the 26-years-later compromise-of-necessity incarnation of a film that almost was. Shot in 1992, when Tan was in college, from a proudly illogical script of her own devising, Shirkers was meant to be a rare, hopefully transformative Singaporean independent film in a country without much history of those. Directed by Tan’s ambivalently-motivated mentor Georges Cardona — who subsequently absconded with […]...

In 1992, teenager Sandi Tan and her two film-loving best friends spent their summer break making an independent film in their home of Singapore. It would have been one of the country’s first independent films if it had been completed. After filming, their director and film teacher Georges Cardona stole their completed footage. When Tan got the footage back two decades later, she decided to make a documentary about the making of her movie — and what exactly happened to it afterward.

After a screening of her documentary, “Shirkers” (named after the original movie), as part of the International Documentary Association’s annual screening series in Los Angeles, Tan said the main question she’s gotten at Q&As is why she and her friends didn’t search harder for the man who stole their movie.

“A lot of people don’t seem to remember that in the ’90s, the Internet didn’t exist yet,...

Winner of the World Cinema Documentary Directing Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Shirkers was picked up by Netflix and now ahead of a fall debut the first trailer has arrived. Produced by Maya Rudolph, Sandi Tan’s documentary follows the director revisiting her past as she embarked on shooting a film back in the early 90s in Singapore. However, the footage was stolen and the film never came to be. Judging from the first trailer, it looks to be a deeply personal, artistic look at revisiting both a fruitful and painful past.

Dan Schindel said in his review, “The old shots of Tan, her friends working on the production (the extremely well-preserved footage included all the behind-the-scenes bits), and the city are frequently cut with modern-day material. The ‘90s portrait of youthful energy is now directly a photo album of their youth. Tan compares shots of buildings...

Netflix has released the first trailer for Shirkers, a documentary about Sandi Tan, Jasmine Ng, and Sophie Siddique's mission to find their long-lost student film and their director, who mysteriously disappeared with the footage. The movie was written by Tan in the early 1990s and filmed when she was a teenager, posing as a punk rock feminist slasher film. She also starred in the movie as a girl who goes around killing men out of boredom. Tan's aim was to take a deeper look at youth energy, creativity, and alienation, but all of her hard work and energy were wasted once the film was stolen.

Shirkers was a Singapore-made 1992 independent film that could have gone on to be a worldwide classic had it not been stolen by enigmatic American collaborator and director Georges Cardona. Over two decades after Cardona disappeared, Sandi Tan, now a novelist living in Los Angeles, returns...

The Sheffield Doc/Fest, one of the largest non-fiction festivals in the world, kicked off this weekend with around 200 films as it celebrates its 25th anniversary. The festival is launching the world premiere of films such as Jack Black-associated The Insufferable Groo, the European premiere of Neon-acquired Three Identical Strangers and UK premieres of Pedro Almodóvar-exec produced The Silence of Others and Maya Rudolph-produced Shirkers.

The event, which runs June 7 to 12 and is somewhat similar to the Sundance Film Festival, is both a publicly facing festival with a sizeable industry angle, with broadcasters and filmmakers debating the future of the form and highlighting the latest high-profile projects.

Former Discovery commissioner Liz McIntyre, who is Chief Executive and Festival Director at Sheffield Doc/Fest, highlighted the opening night film Sean McAllister’s A Northern Soul, which follows underdog Steve, a factory worker by day and hip hop performer by night,...

Platform also acquires doc short Zion.

Netflix has boarded worldwide rights to Sandi Tan’s personal quest story Shirkers following its recent world premiere in Sundance.

Singapore-born Los Angeles resident Tan won the directing award in the World Cinema Documentary category last month for the film about her journey to uncover the mystery behind her missing film.

After Tan and friends Jasmine Ng and Sophie Siddique shot a noir film in Singapore in 1992, their American director and mentor Georges Cardona made off with the 16mm footage and was never seen again. Netflix negotiated the deal with Josh Braun of Submarine on behalf of filmmakers.

Netflix has acquired the worldwide rights to Shirkers, a doc that premiered at this year's Sundance film festival where director Sandi Tan won the directing award in world cinema documentary.

Tan, Jasmine Ng and Sophia Siddique made a 16mm noir in Singapore in 1992, titled Shirkers, that was stolen by their American collaborator Georges Cardona, who then disappeared. More than two decades later, Tan, now a novelist in L.A., received the 70 canisters of film, prompting her to return home.

The streamer also picked up doc short Zion, which follows Zion Clark, a young wrestler born without legs who grew up in foster care.

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Netflix announced Wednesday that it has acquired worldwide rights to Sandi Tan’s documentary feature “Shirkers,” which won the Directing Award in World Cinema Documentary following its world premiere at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. The film screened to great acclaim and will next be shown at the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri, on March 2. An inspired labor of love for zine-making teens Sandi Tan, Jasmine Ng and Sophie Siddique, “Shirkers” was a Singapore-made 1992 cult classic — or it would have been, had the 16mm footage not been stolen by their enigmatic American collaborator Georges Cardona, who disappeared. More...

We’ve already written about Sandi Tan‘s Shirkers, her debut feature documentary named after the long-lost footage from her 1992 would-be feature debut of the same names. Under the mentorship of the mysterious Georges Cardona, the college-age Tan and friends embarked on making a rare Singaporean independent film; this documentary revisits that film and tells the story of Tan’s life to date while on the trail of the elusive Cardona. We’ve also already posted an interview with early project editor Lucas Celler; here, we pass on the baton to editor Kimberley Hassett, who brought the film to final cut. Filmmaker: How and why […]...

Shirkers was the name of the script Sandi Tan wrote in the early ‘90s. A cinema-obsessed 18-year-old living in famously strict Singapore, Tan was inspired by the likes of Jim Jarmusch, the French New Wave, and the Coen Brothers to concoct a tale about a teenage girl who goes road trip (in a country which takes 40 minutes to cross) to “collect” friends while assassinating people she likes (with finger guns). Now, Shirkers is the documentary Tan has made about her youth dream project – how she and friends put it together, and how it fell apart.

The ‘90s Shirkers starred Tan and was directed by her mentor, the mysterious Georges Cardona, who initially comes across as a weirdo, possibly pervy dude but ends up being more like a non-murdering Tom Ripley, constantly lying about his background and who he is. (He was the inspiration for James Spader’s character in sex,...

“Shirkers” is a documentary about the production of an uncompleted movie, but it doubles as an upgraded version of the missing project itself. As a punk teen in early-nineties Singapore, Sandi Tan wrote a feminist slasher movie for the ages, an exploitation road movie designed to ruminate on the energy of youth, creativity, and alienation. The director, a much older American high school instructor with dubious motives, stole the film canisters for unknown reasons and vanished into the mist; two decades later, Tan has completed a fascinating personal look at her quest to uncover his motives, resurrecting the significance of her original intentions in the process.

Tan’s actual debut, “Shirkers” takes its title from her earlier effort, an adorably deranged slasher movie in which she starred as a bored young woman killing men to pass the time. Though her old pals celebrate its relevance to Singapore’s minuscule film community at the time,...