LAFF Review: Intelligent, Deeply Felt Documentary 'Missing People'

“Can you stop telling me about the work and tell me why you’re doing it?” Midway through “Missing People,” a sister of the late outsider artist Roy Ferdinand asks this question to art gallerist Martina Batan. But by then we already know the answer, or rather we know the attraction -- Ferdinand’s lively and violent paintings of New Orleans street life hold some healing aspect for Batan, who’s been reeling ever since her 14-year-old brother’s unsolved murder in 1978. Director David Shapiro focuses his documentary on that unknown pull: we all have compulsions toward a specific artist or artwork, but here he chronicles one woman’s route to articulating why.

The film initially feels like a hoodwink of sorts. When we first meet Batan, she’s serving as Vice President and Director of an established art gallery in New York. Her mission is clear: to amass the largest collection of Roy Ferdinand’s work and belongings (down to his old boots with socks still inside), and donate them to a...