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. With Cardona set to direct, the film went through increasingly bizarre obstacles, all involving Cardona, who posed as a prominent American film professional. After the film was finished, the 16mm film it was shot on vanished, along with Cardona.

Discouraged and understandably put off by her experience with Cardona, Tan largely gave up on her filmmaking pursuits. That is, until, the 16mm film rolls containing the entirety of the original 1992 feature “Shirkers,” unscathed, mysteriously resurfaced 20 years later. Tan’s documentary follows her as she reestablishes contact with her old friends and filmmaking colleagues to uncover the truth behind the missing tapes and Cardona’s disappearance.

Recently, Tan and I sat down to speak about her documentary “Shirkers,” the inspiration behind the original cult-hit-that-never-was, the documentary’s subject, and more.

I loved “Shirkers.” You capture a changing Singapore in your documentary. What effects did the landscape of Singapore have on your growing up, creatively and personally?

It was pretty darn urban. It was not bucolic. And the division of Singapore that we had is distinctly curated to be completely different from the Singapore I grew up with, which is schools that look like spaceships. and skyscrapers, and that kind of thing. So it was a deliberate attempt to do a very different thing. I was very deliberately wanting to create my own mythology of Singapore that had not been seen that had all my favorite places in them. The sleepy, suburban neighborhoods. That gate that says “my blue heaven.” For the longest time, I’ve seen that gate and I’ve wanted to put it somewhere in the movie.

And all these odd things like mannequin stores. I mean, there are so many of them, and I knew that they wouldn’t exist for much longer. I just knew. And then the topiary that ballerinas dance around in the botanic gardens? That does not exist anymore. They didn’t preserve it. We tried to pinpoint where it had been. I went back there, like, three years ago and tried to find the spot and I couldn’t find it because it’s been completely paved over. They didn’t even preserve the beloved topiaries.

Read the rest of the interview at The Playlist.