Jacqueline Zünd has been one of the most notable names in the field of Swiss documentary filmmaking since her 2010 debut with Goodnight Nobody, a portrait of insomniacs. It is no surprise, then, that her fiction debut Don’t Let the Sun was one of the more hotly anticipated titles at the 78th Locarno Film Festival. Already an intriguing prospect for buyers and other festivals due to its topical premise, it’s bound to get an additional boost after winning one of the two Best Performance awards in the festival’s Concorso Cineasti del presente.
Said award went to Levan Gelbakhiani, who already made a splash on the festival circuit in 2019 in Levan Akin’s And Then We Danced. The Georgian actor stars as Jonah, a man with an unusual profession: he works for an agency that sells simulates human relationships, tailored to each customer’s individual needs. This practice, which does exist in Japan (where you can hire someone even just to see you off at the train station), has become an almost vital necessity in the near future that is depicted in the film. What is already a nuisance in our world has turned into a living nightmare in the one shown on screen, as the scorching temperatures have made it nearly impossible to go outside and form meaningful connections with other people.
Jonah’s new assignment is to act as a father to a young girl, Nika (newcomer Maria Pia Pepe). He takes on the task as the consummate professional he is, but soon his meticulously structured life starts to show signs of unbalance. The bond between the two characters is the film’s emotional core, albeit a very subdued one as Gelbakhiani and Pepe have very little dialogue (a decision made during filming, according to Zünd) and convey the layers of their on-screen connection through awkward body language, uncertain gazes and sometimes pained silences. With the added detail of Gelbakhiani essentially delivering a performance within a performance, it’s a quietly powerful achievement.
Equally powerful, and very much a direct consequence of the director’s background, is the sense of place derived from the use of real locations. Zünd came up with the premise while working on a separate project about how heat affects human behavior, leading to her vision of a world not too far removed from our own where global warming has wrecked daily routines and social interactions. The unspecified setting of the movie is a combination of establishing shots captured in Rio de Janeiro and location filming carried out in Milan and Genoa – where the summer temperatures were an almost exact match of the metaphorical hellscape imagined by the director.
As such, not unlike Jean-Stéphane Bron’s work on The Deal, Zünd’s first foray into fiction filmmaking is one that’s still very strongly informed by her eye for the real. And it is oddly, touchingly fitting that such an eye would conceive of a believable, tangible universe where emotional bonds are manufactured. And in the end, it’s that verisimilitude which helps the human factor get through.
Director: Jacqueline Zünd
Screenwriters Jacqueline Zünd, Arne Kohlweyer
Cast: Levan Gelbakhiani, Maria Pia Pepe, Agnese Claisse, Karidja Touré, Cecilia Bertozzi
Producers: Louis Mataré, David Fonjallaz, Davide Pagano, Andrea Randazzo, Gianfilippo Pedote
Cinematography: Nikolai von Graevenitz
Production design: Nicole Hoesli
Costume design: Sophie Reble
Music: Marcel Vaid
Sound: Balthasar Jucker
Production companies: Lomotion, Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF), Casa delle Visioni
World sales: Sideral Cinema
Venue: Locarno Film Festival (Concorso Cineasti del presente)
In English
100 minutes
