Dear Zachary: A Letter To A Son About His Father

A couple of days ago I asked an open question to some friends to try to get me some crazy, whacked out documentary to watch. Nothing unfortunately really matched the level I wanted, so I instead found Dear Zachary to watch, hearing it was at least powerful, and a bit fucked up.

But real life, fucked up, not the the made up conspiracy theories way.

Either this is really touching documentary, or a really creepy one.

Basic gist of the story:

Andrew is a guy who people apparently like. Went to Med School, was in training to be a doctor, meets with a Shirley Turner girl, who no one really knows about. Bit later, Andrew is dead, shot six times, while trying to break up with Shirley. She flees back to Newfoundland, and now claims to be pregnant with a baby from Andrew.

The documentary director/friend Kurt Kuenne originally sets off to gather all the information on Andrew that he can, through his old family video recordings (used to make fake movies) to interviews with all of his family and friends, so that someday, his son can learn about his passed father, and also more of the circumstances that lead to his demise. The piece also follows Andrew’s parents, as they move to Newfoundland to begin a long custody battle through the Canadian government to gain the rights to the son, from the woman who is slowly being convicted of killing the husband.

Sounds messed up, yeah? Because it is. And I can’t say more about it. Will ruin the story.

I liked the story a lot, in a “WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT” sort of way. Lot of real emotion in it, given the topic that was probably obvious. The only reason I don’t give it a 4 is just because of weird editing that kept bugging me throughout.

Mostly occurred at the beginning, when the documentary didn’t flow very well at all, not to mention a few times when they said they would get to something later and then barely touch on that topic later. This is the world of wikipedia damn it, we need more information!