07/04/2023 - The winner of the Talents section at D’A is directed by five filmmakers, makes the most of its scant resources and relies on the power of suggestion to make us uneasy despite its luminous title

Do you remember Laia Artigas, the girl who starred in 2017’s Summer 1993 [+see also:
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interview: Carla Simón
film profile]? Well, as you can imagine, she has now grown up and once again provides the (special, unique and sensitive) main gaze in A Bright Sun, a plural and collective work by Mònica Cambra, Ariadna Fortuny, Clàudia García de Dios, Lucía Herrera and Mònica Tort. The filmmakers, with a diverse array of origins (hailing from Gran Canaria, Menorca and Catalonia) and different career paths behind them, met while studying at the Pompeu Fabra Univeristy, and with their debut feature, they scooped the award in the Talents section of the recent D’A Barcelona Film Festival, which hosted the movie’s world premiere, attended by Carla Simón herself.

As in the films by the Alcarràs [+see also:
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interview: Carla Simón
interview: Carla Simón
interview: Giovanni Pompili
film profile] director, A Bright Sun also takes place in the summer, in rural surroundings, and it focuses on one family: right from the first few frames, the clouds, trees, wind and landscape gradually start creating an atmosphere that is simultaneously beautiful and unsettling, as something terrible is looming. It’s an uncertainty that is given a name and which they all live with, in the same way that we are all used to dealing with it after the pandemic: the fact that sooner or later, this planet that we call home will go to hell in a handbasket.

Its young protagonist, Mila (Artigas), is a pre-teen with heightened sensitivity and an extremely expressive face gazing at Íngrid, her older sister (played by Núria Sales), with no lack of admiration or affection, and with the strange sensation that she will never get to experience the same emotional whirlwind as her: the exhilarating radiance one feels when one falls in love for the first time. At the same time, their mother (played by Núria Prims, also appearing in the recent titles Sica [+see also:
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film profile] and La última noche de Sandra M., both of which were presented at the latest Málaga Film Festival) and their grandfather Gabriel (Jaume Villalta) attempt to grapple – sometimes with conflicting attitudes – with an imminent future in which exerting control over our destiny has been turned into an impossible fantasy.

And so, with their camera seldom averting its gaze from Mila, the directors of this film – which is gutsy enough to dabble in the league of apocalyptic cinema while at the same time portraying the disenchantment of a youth with no future (perhaps today’s?) – gradually ramp up those disheartening feelings in the viewer, with scant, but slickly leveraged, resources.

Drawing on the power of suggestion thanks to their shrewd use of the camera (with what’s out of shot serving as a devastating weapon of mass destruction), the five friends have crafted a very subtle but psychologically suspenseful movie that poses the question: how can someone prepare themselves for the impending doom of the end of the world? Because is there even an answer to that? There is not, but it is probably not a million miles away from the mix of anger, astonishment, acceptance and melancholy with which the Verdi family approaches it – but they manage to do so while staying united and, most importantly, in the way we would all wish to end our days: with a party.

A Bright Sun is an Atiende Films production made in collaboration with IB3 Televisió.

(Translated from Spanish)