I cannot praise this heartfelt documentary enough. Too often documentaries with such a personal tie have touch (or more) of vanity. Not Dear Zachary.

Kurt Kuenne could have easily turn this tribute to a dead friend into a vanity project, or overly sentimental. The evolution of this project is full of sentiment, indeed, but is done so in such a way that the viewer is completely engaged in the story and feels the loss on a personal level.

This is the hardest film to review because to explain it, is to spoil the experience of it. Let's just say that Andrew Bagby was a very loved person, and this tribute to a man whose life was brutally cut short could have easily been a depressing, dark tale. Instead, while it has some wrenching moments, it's ultimately a love story of family and friends, and the powerful influence people can have in each others lives, for good and for ill.

If you have the opportunity to catch this film, do not hesitate to do it. This is one I'm adding to my DVD collection as soon as it's available.

One of the pleasures of an all access pass to film festivals is the opportunity to be drawn to something by word of mouth. I was accidentally standing outside the theatre after the first viewing of this film at the Sarasota Film Festival. Everyone coming out was raving about it, a film that I had originally pegged as just another manipulative true crime documentary. Most had been crying like babies. My freedom at the venue allowed me to change from a viewing of Priceless to this film. I had no idea I was waking into a wall of cinematic fury.

To say it was staggering is inadequate. The impact of it all is in part driven by style. Though the form is a traditional overlapping story structure, the frenetic pace of the presentation creates a sense many times of 'too much information'. Mixed in however are some stylistic tricks that act as accent marks to move your perception to one place versus others. This moves your feelings in one direction or another within the time frame of larger movements of emotion that drive the story. The technique, though not unique, is applied in the course of a story that would seem to demand more subtly, however, it works wonderfully. Could it be that within this piece of time about a very personal tragedy a new documentary form emerges?

But the story and the trek to get through it are what keeps you glued. I will not go into the morphology of the multiplex of stories here since it would ruin the impact. Leave it to say that constant unexpected change ups give one the feeling you are on a roller coaster of emotional complexity. The net effect leaves you nearly breathless and, as one sobbing young woman I convinced to see the film told me, in desperate need of water.

The film ends with a seemingly endless list of all involved, most at least tangentially affected by the event if not actually in the film content. As you absorb the story's impact, consider that the true theme of the film is to introduce you to this virtual community of people discovered by this young filmmaker who started with an homage to his best friend and ended up capturing something far more profound.

There are many moments where we try to take solace in the good that can come from the horrid. After viewing this, ask yourself that even though all involved would have wished for the events not to have happened, the emotional fulfillment exuding from this film may have left all surviving the better for it. This filmmaker's love letter to his vastly extended family that grew out of the tragedy and his odyssey documenting it make for the kind of things we most look forward to in the cinema.

What started off as a love letter sort of project for a late friend's son, became something quite horrifically unimaginable as Kurt Kuenne's documentary wore on. It's filled with enough twists and turns, and moments where you would deem manipulative thanks to the power of editing and sledge-hammering some obvious emotional points through, but told in such a compelling, engaging fashion that you can't help but be caught up in both the video memorial, as well as the documentary aspects of some heinous crimes committed.

The project started off as a huge collection of video recordings from family, relatives and friends of Andrew Bagby, who at age 28 was found murdered with 5 gunshot wounds to his body. Kuenne had decided to embark on a cross-country project to document the memories of Andrew's closed ones to allow them to share with his unborn son, their respective tributes and nuggets of information of a man who had his life unfairly cut short. And through this collection of videos, with of course its snippets of Andrew himself making it to the film, allows for the audience to identify and get chummy even with jovial man who's so full of life. Until a mistake was made.

Which involved a relationship with a much older woman, and would spell trouble with a capital T, being the villain which you'd love to hate thanks to the unflattering portrayal put together by Kuenne. Accounts from friends too turn out to be filled with plenty of negative vibes, and she's prime suspect #1 (almost without qualms actually) to be guilty of the homicide. To make matters worse, she's pregnant with Andrew's kid. For the second half of the film, it became sort of a murder-mystery, and follows the uphill battle of Andrew's parents Kate and David Bagby in their custody battle, for which you'll feel an abundance for in the crazy ordeal they were put through deliberately designed to test their mental strength and willpower.

It's a remarkable effort in trying to preserve the memory of someone, fused together with the last days and aftermath of a person's life, and documenting some 3 generations of the unfortunate Bagbys, as well as filling in the inadequacies of the justice system regarding bail. Not to mention too the ridiculousness of the folks sitting high up in their ivory towers and having lost touch with the ground, of the indifferent attitudes such people bear in making what seemed to be irrational decisions and judgements, that probably wouldn't fly over here.

You'll feel some pangs of sorrow for what the film had pieced together, and empathize with both Kate and David for having bear witness to crimes that could have been prevented should proactive, common-sensical action be taken. From what turned out to be trying to capture in essence the multi-facet life we all lead depending on who we're with, and the discovery of new things about a friend passed on, this film took on greater proportions and became a more powerful force in social activism. Not to be missed if you have the opportunity to watch it!