From The Hollywood Reporter · Etan Vlessing · · 1m 20s
A 'hood film with no violence in it
Serville Poblete set his coming-of-age drama in a Toronto housing complex and left out everything you expect.
In brief
Serville Poblete set his coming-of-age drama in a Toronto housing complex and left out everything you expect. You can tell a story about a neighborhood without making trauma the whole plot. Originally reported by The Hollywood Reporter.
A 'hood film, reframed
Serville Poblete's Sunburn is set in a Toronto housing complex and contains no gang violence and no police brutality. That absence is the point.
St. James Town in summer
The story takes place in St. James Town, a downtown high-rise complex in Canada's biggest city, during a stretch of brutal summer heat.
The blackout does the work
A citywide power outage pushes the young characters off their phones and out into the neighborhood. No screens, nowhere to be, just each other.
Joking, teasing, roaming
What fills the runtime is hangout energy: kids ribbing one another as they wander the block trying to escape the heat. Plot takes a back seat to company.
Trauma is not the only story
Poblete says films about the 'hood usually center drugs, violence and trauma. He calls those films important, then makes the case for a different register.
“a lot of films about the 'hood are usually about trauma and violence and drugs, which I think are important”
Premiering at Toronto
Sunburn has its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, putting a Filipino-Canadian director's warm take on his own city in front of a hometown crowd.
“I wanted to reframe what that means”
In short
You can tell a story about a neighborhood without making trauma the whole plot.
