DailyView: Day 329, Movie 472

This one wrecked me.

The documentary on Amazon Prime from filmmaker Kurt Kuenne is a heart-wrenching and powerful love letter to Kurt’s friend, Andrew Bagby, who was a beloved doctor by tons of people. Unfortunately, he was murdered by a woman, Shirley Turner, who he had broken up with. Turned out that Turner was pregnant with Andrew’s baby and she gave birth to Zachary, a beautiful boy.

Kuenne started the film as a way of giving Zachary insight into the father that he would never know, but it turned out to be something considerably more tragic.

Andrew’s parents, David and Kathleen, were at the center of the attempts to try and gain custody of Zachary, but they had to play along with Shirley as she was in and out of jail on bail and as the courts in Canada slowly progressed, Shirley manipulated the system.

The documentary showed the despair from the Bigbys about the situation as well as showing them as two of the strongest people around. And they were going to have to be.

I’m not going to go into specifics about what happens with this story. If you can come into this documentary without knowledge of the case, like I did, you will find this to be a gripping, emotional tale that hits on all of your feelings.

I can’t imagine the pain and the anguish these amazing people suffered, with the knowledge that the woman who had murdered their son was now responsible for the life of their grandson. Still, I was not ready for the way this story went.

The ending of the doc was filled with love and heart. It was a tough one to watch, but the love is obvious and the powerful moments made it worth it.