Director Anna Brewer’s short film, Sunny Days Ahead, will screen as part of the 2026 Three Rivers Film Festival. It’s a quiet documentary about an artist in preparation for her next exhibition. Sunny Days Ahead is at the confluence of art, environmental stewardship, and gentle care for humans and the planet we call home. From that description, one might not guess that it was loud “dude bro” comedies that captured Brewer’s heart as a kid and inspired her to go down the filmmaking path.
Anna Brewer, courtesy of Anna Brewer
“Growing up, we didn't have TV for a long time. When we did finally get one, we didn't get cable, so all we had were movies from Mike’s Video, where we were serial never-returners.”
Brewer explains that she grew up with her father and three brothers after her mom passed away. The love for “dude bro” comedy may have started when Brewer was a kid, but the impression it left on her has remained. On the other side of things, though, Brewer points to Ingmar Bergman as a filmmaker who is on equal ground with Will Ferrell. It’s all a matter of perspective in her eyes.
Before she started making films, Brewer was a painter because that “seemed attainable and reasonable.” It was a way of making art without the barrier of equipment, crew, and preparation. As she focused her attention more on film, though, she realized there was a way filmmaking could offer a similar means of access. That’s evident in her approach to shooting Sunny Days Ahead.
Carye Bye is a self-described trash nabber. She lives in the Woods Run corridor of Pittsburgh and spends her days collecting trash and caring for the land. Carye doesn’t collect the garbage to put it into a landfill. She uses what she finds to make art. Crafted from bottle caps, scrap metal, fabrics, and more, Carye’s work is made in part with her community members who have left their trash behind, rather than caring for the stunning natural environment in their backyard.
Brewer’s and Carye’s paths crossed through the Urban Trails organization that Brewer co-founded and where Carye serves as Woods Run Steward. When Brewer approached Carye about making a documentary, Carye was immediately game.
“She was very into it. Not all my subjects want to be filmed, but she definitely wanted to be. She’s an outgoing, very public person. I think she was pretty excited, but she didn't really know what it was going to be. That's always the case, because you don't always know what it's going to be.”
Courtesy of Anna Brewer
At the end of the day, Sunny Days Ahead is indisputably about Carye, so the project had to stay quite intimate in nature. Too many cameras or lights would make production difficult, so oftentimes it was just Brewer and Carye. The only lighting available was a lamp, which might intimidate some filmmakers, but it’s in these close, personal quarters that Brewer feels like she does her best work.
After meeting Film Pittsburgh Executive Director Shanna Carrick at a Women in Film and Media mixer last year, Brewer was encouraged to submit Sunny Days Ahead for the festival. Brewer hadn’t really considered film festivals, but she submitted because she wanted to challenge herself. Most of her work is in the documentary space because she has always had “a serious distaste for injustice.” That fire in her belly has led her to people in Pittsburgh who are building community through a variety of different channels.
“I like following other people. I like going into their lives. I want to make documentaries about people I genuinely want to learn more about. Like Carye . She has a very distinct interest in tiny pieces of trash. That's really weird to me and it doesn't make sense. She's the third story I've done about these trash warriors, as I call them, who are people who are just willing to spend time to go out there and fight through the chronic waste that’s plaguing our society. Carye calls herself a biologist. She's thinking about trash collection in a more critical, analytical way. I like documentary work because I like elevating other people's voices.”
Brewer has struggled to allow the spheres of art and activism to overlap in her world. Since her time at Penn State, she has kept art and community organizing separate. As such, she often feels split down the middle. Her creative friends in college never met the activists and vice versa, but it was finding documentary films in the subsequent years that allowed these two important aspects of her life to overlap in a meaningful fashion.
“I believe very strongly that to grow an organization, storytelling is how you help people understand your agenda. Help them understand what's possible. You help them see the people who care about this thing. To me, that's the greatest invitation to others to learn, care, and grow together. Most of my work is connected to a mission. Homegrown films that are intended to move an agenda.”
“When you're in an environment and you see that it's being degraded, you have to make a choice. Do you walk by the same shit every day and ignore it? In this city, it's impossible, in my opinion, to ignore. I don't see how I can enjoy nature and pretend like nothing's threatening it every day and in every direction. Art and environmental stewardship are pretty inseparable, especially in urban spaces.”
In addition to being the film’s director and one of three cinematographers on Sunny Days Ahead, Brewer also edited the film. She describes her process as relative to how she would approach her painting practice. For both, it was more about seeing how layers could come together than about starting the project with a set-in-stone plan.
“I like the challenge of editing. I never had a set desire for what it was going to be. In the edit you're learning, relearning, and finding things.”
Looking to the future, Brewer is interested in making a feature-length documentary with her production company. Like Sunny Days Ahead and the rest of her work, her idea for her feature is a mission-driven film that digs into the air quality in Pittsburgh, a topic that becomes more pressing every year. Before she gets there, though, there’s the Three Rivers Film Festival screening, where Sunny Days Ahead will play as part of the Shorts N’At program. Brewer, without hesitation, is ready for this next step.
“When you keep things really tight and close to yourself, you only know how you feel about them, right? How you see them. You're a very critical human, as most of us are. Our feelings about our work can be very suffocating.”
“With this screening, it's the local community that I love and have really steeped myself into. Rooted myself to. To be able to feel kind of held by them in a way that I really haven't experienced for a long time, I think is just exciting.”
“I feel excited to be a part of the film community. It’s a thing I've always wanted to be but struggled to identify as. I feel like I can call myself a filmmaker now, and that's very cool.”
Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Letterboxd, TikTok, YouTube, & Facebook. Check out Movies with My Dad, a podcast recorded on the car ride home from the movies.
Support your local film critic!
~
Support your local film critic! ~
Beyond the Cinerama Dome is run by one perpetually tired film critic
and her anxious emotional support chihuahua named Frankie.
Your kind donation means Frankie doesn’t need to get a job…yet.