Shot when director Harley Chamandy was 22, making him the youngest recipient of the Werner Herzog award for “special achievement in innovation, courage and vision”, this short Canadian drama digs into the peaceable Kaspar Hauser rather than the megalomaniac Aguirre end of the Herzog spectrum. Starring Vincent Leclerc as the eponymous former music producer taking refuge in a lakeside house, it has a disarming simplicity and aura of benevolence.
Allen Sunshine is a man who seems to have successfully decluttered his life. Accompanied by his great dane, Sully, he spends his time recording nature sounds in the surrounding woods and tweaking his electronica music indoors. He is, though, in recovery from trauma; an unannounced visit from his brother prises open his past in the music industry. And when he meets a couple of local kids called Dustin (Miles Phoenix Foley) and Kevin (Liam Quiring-Nkindi), they already know he was the husband and svengali of big-time singer Eloise Hayes. But she is nowhere to be seen.
