A slightly euphoric coming-of-age drama about a 17-year-old girl who survives cancer and is persuaded by her parents to attend a summer camp for children who have received chemotherapy, a so-called “chemo camp”.
Bella Ramsey was skeptical when she first heard the pitch for George Jacques’ “Sunny Dancer.” She called it “a recipe for disaster” and worried it would come across as shady, embarrassing and cliched. But after reading the script and having a Zoom meeting with the director in the middle of filming The Last of Us 2, she changed her mind. After recording in Scotland she gushed:
– “Sunny Dancer” is the best thing I have seen so far in my career. “A big claim, but honestly it was probably the best six weeks of my professional life,” Bella Ramsey said as she met the world press in Berlin on Friday.
The experience was too Proof that she was right – to leave the big Hollywood productions and turn instead to low-budget British independent films.
– The thing about independent film is that everyone is there because they want to be. And with “Sunny Dancer” we wanted to create something very special, says Bella Ramsey, saying that this experience inspired her to start directing at some point.
For George Jaques, the issue of cancer is deeply personal. He was 15 when his mother was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer, which she survived. The fear of losing his mother was translated into filmmaking. He tells us that the charming and heartwarming coming-of-age drama “Sunny Dancer” was inspired by films like “Lady Bird” and “Juno.”
The main role is played by Bella Ramsey So 17-year-old Ivy ends up in a children’s camp where Neil Patrick Harris plays a camp leader. Above all, Ivy finds unexpected friendship in a strange group of misfits.
Ramsey believes there are “a lot of weird parallels” between her own life and the character.
– I was in Ivy. I never really became a teenager because I worked from a young age. I went straight from child to adult, so to speak, so I skipped puberty. “It was very liberating and healing to experience it through Ivy,” says Game of Thrones breakout Bella Ramsey.
However, it was a challenge to take on the character.
– Ivy was someone I was afraid to play because she’s quite… ordinary and I haven’t played that many ordinary people. “It was scarier because it was more revealing and vulnerable and there was little to hide behind,” Ramsey says.
“Sunny Dancer” appears in the “Generation 14 plus” section of the Berlin Festival, which has been a political stronghold as a “showcase of the free world” since its founding at the beginning of the Cold War. Despite the political unrest sweeping the world, the 76th edition was marked by political horror – at least outside of cinemas. Wim Wenders, this year’s chairman of the Golden Bear jury, set the tone on the opening day: “We have to stay out of politics,” said the German director in response to a question about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Sitting next to him was the festival’s British director, Tricia Tuttle, who, with the same frenzy with which Basil Fawlty tried not to mention the war in Bang in the Building, did everything she could to steer the conversation away from politics.
This year’s honorary winner Michelle Yeoh, who won an Oscar for “Everything Everywhere at Once,” also called on everyone to “focus on what’s important to us, which is the film.”
Also “Sunny Dancer”– During Friday’s press conference, the ensemble decided to face a barrage of political questions. When asked how to fight fascism, Neil Patrick Harris answered evasively:
– We live in a strangely algorithmic and divided world, and as an artist I want to make things that are apolitical, says Neil Patrick Harris, known from the TV series “How I Met Your Mother”.
A German journalist was not satisfied with the answers and condemned the ensemble’s attempt to deny “Sunny Dancer” as political. She said it was “embarrassing” to say the film wasn’t political and asked the question: Do you dare criticize your government and do you think democracy in the United States is in danger?
– Wow, Harris replied. I have my own political views, but as an artist I try to be as inclusive as possible. “I never read this script as a political stance,” Harris says.
He was granted by director George Jacques:
– Sometimes being optimistic is the most rebellious thing you can do. And we wanted to make a film about joy. There’s so much going on in the world right now and I wanted to create something that really took you somewhere else… Yes, it’s a cancer movie. But it’s actually about a young girl who begins to fall in love with the world again. Something we should probably all try.
Read more: Kim Ekberg: “I want to make a Svenden experimental film for the whole people”
Read more about the Berlin Film Festival
