Tribeca: “Sunny” Captures Teenage Hope, Loss, & Potential
What do you do when your dreams outgrow your hometown? It’s a question many eighteen-year-olds ask themselves when they finish their mandatory schooling and set their sights on something grander than the world around them. It’s this question that’s at the heart of German Gruber Jr.’s Tribeca-screening short film, Sunny. Teenage hope and angst are wrapped in this narrative short about dreams and the people who help us chase them.
Fito (Thayzhean Aniseto) dreams of playing guitar abroad. The audience is introduced to him first through the sounds of his guitar and his fingers moving over the frets. Over the course of Sunny, we hear Fito speak more with his music than with his words. He’s making plans to leave his hometown and friends behind to chase his music dreams, and one of those plans is selling his guitar. His ex-girlfriend (Sharlianne Beaumont) thinks he’s making a mistake by selling the instrument that means so much to him. As the time remaining in his hometown comes to an end, Fito has to reckon with all that he’s losing and all that he might gain.
courtesy of Tribeca
The opening of Sunny is a sight to behold in how effectively it introduces us to this character. We see close-ups of his fingers, and his face lost in the music he’s making. Without so much as a word, Gruber Jr. makes it obvious that Fito needs this guitar. That it’s an extension of himself, his heart outside his body. The camera lingers over posters on his wall of musicians who came before him and we fill in the blanks. One day, Fito hopes to be on a poster on some kid’s wall. With this opening, Gruber Jr. has created something gentle and soulful right off the bat. It’s beautiful to see someone like Fito, who has found the thing that makes him feel alive, and meet him at a point where so much exists for the taking.
Sunny is a lovely reflection on the end of something. It’s the finale of eighteen years of comfort and familiarity giving way to the unknowable. A place and an era are concluding for Fito, whose world is irrevocably changed. The friends we had, the girls we loved, and the streets we grew up on will live forever in our hearts, providing fuel to pursue our dreams, but there comes a time when they have to be left behind. Sunny is a dreamy rumination on the power our ambitions have over us and the people, long gone or by our sides, who add fuel to our fires.
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