Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father is a 2008 American documentary directed, written and produced by Kurt Kuenne. After his close friend Andrew Bagby, a medical resident, was killed in 2001, not long after the end of a relationship, Kuenne learned that Bagby's former girlfriend was expecting a child. He began filming what was intended as a record for the boy, so that the son would one day have some sense of who his father was. What starts as a personal tribute widens into a broader account, as Kuenne travels and speaks with the people who knew Bagby, while the child's grandparents become involved in a cross-border custody dispute.

Kuenne appears in the film through his narration, and the cast is made up of the people at its centre rather than actors: Andrew Bagby in archival material, his parents David and Kathleen Bagby, Shirley Turner, and Zachary Andrew Turner. The film runs 94 minutes and was produced by MSNBC Films. It is Kuenne's first feature as director; his next, Shuffle, followed in 2012.

Audience response has been strong. On IMDb the film holds 8.5 out of 10 from roughly 45,000 votes, and on TMDB it has 8.1 out of 10 from a much smaller group of about 620 voters. Both figures place it well above the average documentary, with the large IMDb sample in particular suggesting that the film has reached viewers well beyond the circle of people it was originally made for.