SNAPSHOT
Based on author Rebecca Dinerstein’s novel, The Sunlit Night follows the story of an aspiring painter from New York City to the farthest reaches of Arctic Norway for an assignment she hopes will invigorate her work and expand her horizons. In a remote village, among the locals, she meets a fellow New Yorker, who has come in search of a proper Viking funeral only to find that the Chief is but a re-enactor from Cincinnati. The eclectic crew ranges from “home” to “lost,” within the extreme and dazzling landscape of the Far North. Under a sun that never quite sets, and the high standards of an unforgiving mentor, Frances must navigate between ambition, desire, obligation, and risk in order to find a way forward.The film will be led by Jenny Slate (Gifted, Venom), along with Emmy nominee Zach Galifianakis (The Hangover), Tony winner Alex Sharp (The Hustle) and Golden Globe winner Gillian Anderson (The X-Files, Sex Education). It will also feature Fridtjov Såheim, David Paymer, and Jessica Hecht. (synopsis via Coming Soon)
All of us are moribund to some extent or another, but when you’re up to your neck in the same old, same old, it’s hard to see that change is even necessary, let alone how to go about it.
It’s often not until you are well away from your usual comfort zone, whether that’s a job or the town in which you live or people you live with (or all three) that you finally come to grips with what it is you really want from life and can finally see, if not the entire way forward, then at least a step or two down the path.
Such is the case with Frances, an aspiring painter who is feeling as if the fulfillment of her dreams, both personally and professionally, is far beyond her grasp when the opportunity comes to work for a cantankerous concept artist whose current great work is painting a barn in Norway yellow.
Not exactly what she had in mind but she’s at a point where anything is better than nothing and so she impulsively takes the assignment leading to all kinds of discoveries which change her life.
The result is The Sunlit Night, based on the book of the same name, in which it becomes abundantly clear that if we want to find a new way forward, we often have to leave where we are now far behind us, and in so doing, may discover the place we were always meant to be in the first place.
The Sunlit Night releases online in USA on 17 July; international release dates TBA.