“Allen Sunshine,” which premiered at Munich Film Festival earlier this year, is the first feature-length work from 25-year-old Lebanese/Greek-Egyptian director Harley Chamandy. Here, Joe Zadeh speaks to Chamandy about creating a paean to optimism in a time of cynicism and uncertainty.
“Allen Sunshine” will be available to watch November 12 on all platforms.
It’s only fitting that so many of the movies we now consume are tinged with fear, anger or cynicism. In a reflection of the moods and atmospheres that are permeating society, many of the most coveted films of our era come with a dystopian view of the present and future. In this climate, perhaps the most genuinely radical thing a filmmaker can do is to try to tell a modern story filled with genuine optimism.
At its heart, “Allen Sunshine,” written and directed by Harley Chamandy, is about the unlikely blossoming of friendship between a middle-aged man and the two young children who play on the lake by his house. But in the telling of that simple story, it paints a subtle yet spellbinding portrait of what it is to be human: to love and grieve, to yearn for solitude as well as the company of others, to be forever trapped in a cycle of losing touch with and rediscovering the fundamental pleasures of being alive.
“I really wanted to tell a story about love and friendships, and what it means to live with and without them,” says Chamandy when we chat over Zoom. “Allen Sunshine,” which premiered at Munich Film Festival earlier this year, is the first feature-length work from the 25-year-old Lebanese/Greek-Egyptian director. Despite his youth, he’s been making films for just over a decade. One of his earliest efforts—a short film called “Mirage” made for under $1000 when he was 16—caught the attention of independent film festivals, and earned him a spot at a workshop for young filmmakers in Cuba led by Werner Herzog. In a full circle moment for Chamandy, “Allen Sunshine” was awarded the 2024 Werner Herzog Film Prize in July this year. “To be awarded by the very person who made you want to make movies is just insane to me,” he says.
When I’m crafting a frame, I want it to be so strong that it could stand alone, like a painting.
The film begins with Allen, the titular character, living alone in a remote lakeside cabin, nestled on the edge of the woods. He spends little time with others—except for the occasional visit by a neighbor who delivers vegetables—preferring instead to walk his dog, go fishing or make music on the various keyboards, synths and sequencers that fill his home recording studio. The bliss of these moments is enhanced by the warm graininess of the 16mm film it’s shot on, the mesmerizing sound design—through which even the rustle of brown paper grocery bags sounds somehow rich and lustrous—and the soothing ambient electronica that Allen makes in his studio (scored by the sound artist and composer Ethan Rose).
But his paradise has dark shadows. We soon discover that what led Allen here was the tragic death of his wife, a famous pop vocalist for whom he produced music. Scarred by her absence, he’s trying to forge a new reality for himself out there in the woods. As the film unfolds, the strains begin to surface: clashing tensions of past and present, of a previous life of fame and fortune contrasted with his newfound need for solitude and anonymity. It seems poignant that while everyone we encounter in the film appears to have heard and adored Allen’s previous music with his wife, he refuses to play anyone the ambient works he now creates. For him, music has transformed into something private and sacred. His outlook begins to change when he encounters two young boys on the lake who ask him to go fishing with them and refuse to take no for an answer. Slowly, and through a series of powerful yet understated moments, he becomes inspired by their curious and wondrous outlook on the world.
‘Gummo’ by Harmony Korine changed my perspective on what cinema could be—that it wasn’t always just plot-driven.
Chamandy tells me that his ideas always begin with an image. “It often starts at an aesthetic level for me. I was interested in this image of a man by a lake with a dog, and this juxtaposition of all this really technical electronic music equipment with all the green nature surrounding him,” he explains. This passion for aesthetics is evident in his creative influences, which include films (“‘Gummo’ by Harmony Korine changed my perspective on what cinema could be—that it wasn’t always just plot-driven,”) but also fashion designers (“I’m probably more inspired by the designs of Maison Margiela than, like, the films of the Coen Brothers.”)
In the production of “Allen Sunshine,” Chamandy worked incredibly closely with the director of photography, the prop designer and costume designer to make sure every frame, color and texture in the film was adhering to an overall aesthetic harmony. “Lots of filmmakers are more interested in plot, narrative and storytelling... But for me, film is a visual medium,” he says. “When I’m crafting a frame, I want it to be so strong that it could stand alone, like a painting. It’s a crazy attention to detail, but I feel like specificity is what makes the great movies great. Nothing gets overlooked.
“I’m always chasing the small things in my films,” he explains. “I never knew how to describe what they were, but then I read ‘Camera Lucida’ by Roland Barthes and he spoke about this abstract term: punctum.” Used by Barthes to speak about photography, the “punctum” of an image, in his mind, was the tiny and seemingly innocuous details that somehow pierce the viewer and trigger an immense emotional connection. “It’s not so much about the grander story, but these small moments of magic,” Chamandy says. “That’s what I’m always searching for in my movies.”
In one of the later scenes of the film, Allen finally allows the boys, and only them, to hear the music he’s been working on. It’s one of numerous spiritually nourishing junctures that begin to gather in the film’s crescendo, as we watch this closed and wounded soul gradually begin to reopen. “In all my films I’ve worked with kids for some reason, and I think it’s because they remind me of how I want to live and see the world,” says Chamandy. “That optimism is so important to me—in my life and in my films. It can sometimes seem irrelevant because of everything that’s going on in the world, but I think optimism is actually what we need the most right now.”