Sunny Вunny
This year's Sunny Bunny program offers emotional rollercoasters. It includes films, which make you laugh, cry, seriously worry about the characters’ lives, and celebrate the power of the human spirit.
‘Saint Frances’ by Alex Thompson stirs a full range of emotions. 34-year-old Bridget still does not understand how to live an adult life. But in ‘Saint Frances’, none of the characters seems to know that, neither Bridget, nor Frances (but she's six and not obliged to think about adulthood yet), nor any of Frances' mothers. In general, the characters are remarkably similar to people we meet every day, with their thoughts, flaws, and far from perfect ways of solving problems.
The characters of ‘Two of Us’ by Filippo Meneghetti are just as vivid. Nina and Madeleine are in love for decades, enjoying little moments of tenderness together. However, family and friends do not know about their relationship. For them, Nina and Madeleine are just friends and neighbors. However, the tragedy may reveal the truth about their love.
The unwanted disclosure of intimate information haunts the characters of ‘Lingua Franca’ by Isabel Sandoval as well. Her film tells the story of a Filipino migrant Olivia, who wants to stay in the United States in any way. When in crisis due to the failure of the planned fictitious marriage with an American citizen, Olivia meets a young slaughterhouse worker. He does not know that Olivia is a transgender yet.
Feature film ‘A Perfectly Normal Family’ by Malou Reymann also presents a child's perspective. The story by 11-year-old Emma is about an unusual family, where the father decides to become a woman. For Malou, this film is autobiographical, as she herself experienced the same story in her family. Therefore, the film seems to offer the viewer family warmth by including the director's home records.
Family warmth is what characters are missing in ‘Rialto’ by Peter Mackie Burns, named after Dublin’s suburb. Colm, the protagonist, who lost his father and a job, becomes intimate not with his wife, but with a sex worker Jay. Paradoxically, this meeting for both is almost an exclusive opportunity to be open about their difficulties.
‘The Lawyer’ by Romas Zabarauskas also tells the story of the relationship – this time, between a successful lawyer and a webcam model. However, the class conflict here is exacerbated by political tension. Marius, a Lithuanian corporate lawyer, meets Ali, a Syrian refugee stuck in Belgrade, on the Internet. Minimalist mise-en-scènes and Serbian concrete architecture help focus on how identity markers are gradually degrading, as you get to know the person better.
The constructed facade also degrades when Pak and Hoi meet among Hong Kong concrete skyscrapers in Ray Yeung’s film ‘Twilight’s Kiss’. Both are senior, both have spent most of their lives as family men, both are secretly homosexual. It is one of the movies expanding the boundaries of art and highlighting the fact that not only young people can be involved in romantic stories.
The absolute antithesis to the previous film is the film ‘No Hard Feelings’ by Faraz Shariat. A lively, expressive debut film about young people who gradually move on from party hedonism to optimism of love and friendship. Parvis, the son of Iranian immigrants, is sentenced to community service for shop burglary. He meets there Amon and his sister Banafshe, also Iranian refugees.
The same expressive manner of shooting is characteristic of ‘Second Star on the Right’ by Ruth Caudeli. However, it tells us not about young people, but about a group of 30-year-old girlfriends. Emilia, the main character, still feels more comfortable at parties with teenagers and can't stay in one place. While her friends are gradually growing up, and Emilia's girlfriend says that she is ready for a stable family relationship, she herself continues to live a self-destructive teenager-like life.
‘Dry Wind’ by Daniel Nolasco impresses with its excessive brightness and explicitness. It can be briefly described as a queer Giallo. Sandro seems to live on two planes of existence. On the one hand, there is real world with real people, where Sandro stares at men. On the other hand, there is an unattainable, absurd, homoerotic fantasy, as if written off from Tom's from Finland paintings.
Two planes of existence are also depicted in ‘Psychosia’ by Marie Grahtø Sørensen. As evident from the film title its duality lies in mental health. Suicide researcher Viktoria is invited to a psychiatric clinic to try to work with Jenny. Jenny is in and out of mental institutions since she was 5. After several conversations two women form an unhealthy kind of connection straight from thriller films.
‘Moffie’ by Oliver Hermanus is much closer to reality. Moffie means ‘gay’ in Afrikaans. The film tells the story of a young gay, who is taken to the South African army in 1981. The military drill in the country, which is in a state of the civil war because of the apartheid regime, resembles the cruelest episodes of the ‘Full Metal Jacket’. And gays are perceived there as enemies who can be beaten and harassed.
Ivan and Geraldo – the protagonists of film ‘I Carry You With Me’ by Heidi Ewing – were forced to emigrate because of intolerance in their home society. It’s a film made at the junction of fiction and documentary approaches. The story of Ivan and Geraldo is real. Heidi met them and filmed their story as a ‘direct cinema’ flick. Yet she decided that this story must have a fiction component for a deeper exploration of it. Ivan and Geraldo are Mexicans who were forced to move to USA for their own safety.
