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DEAR ZACHARY: A LETTER TO A SON ABOUT HIS FATHER is not for the faint of heart. Filmmaker Kurt Kuenne's excruciatingly powerful documentary begins as a memorial to a lost friend, Andrew Bagby, who was brutally murdered in 2001 by a crazed ex-girlfriend. Yet as Kuenne traveled the globe to interview friends and family of the beloved young doctor, Bagby's killer, Shirley Turner, fled to Newfoundland to escape arrest. Under the backwards protection of the Canadian law, she was allowed to remain free; during that time, she revealed that she was pregnant with Andrew's child. Knowing that this woman was responsible for their son's death, David and Kathleen Bagby nonetheless moved to Newfoundland in order to be closer to their grandson. And that's when things got even worse. With DEAR ZACHARY, Kuenne has fashioned one of the more unusual, and devastating, documentaries of recent memory. It is a deeply personal home video memoir, a true crime thriller, an impassioned plea for judicial reform, and an ode to two of the most heroic, loving parents the screen has ever seen. Each of these, on its own terms, makes the film a striking success, but when they are seamlessly woven together into one narrative, it becomes something much more stunning. DEAR ZACHARY is painful viewing, but it is also nonfiction filmmaking at its most vital and important.
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