For her first feature film, filmmaker Sierra Falconer opted to combine both something comfortable (stories built around the site of many of her happiest childhood memories, Green Lake in Grand Traverse County, Michigan) and something a little more bold (spinning the story as an anthology, including four loosely connected stories).
The result is “Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake),” the rare anthology film that not only earns its structure, but uses it to wonderful effect. As our David Ehrlich wrote of the film when it premiered at Sundance this year, “Where most anthologies spotlight each of their stories with the mono-focus of a slide projector, Falconer’s attention drifts with the warm indifference of a roving sunbeam. Her characters don’t really overlap in any literal respect, but they’re so bound together by a shared sense of place — and by the emergent realization that they’re all just passing through it — that it feels like they’re all neatly interwoven together, especially when they struggle to connect with each other.”
Related Stories
After its Sundance debut, the film was picked up by Caryn Coleman’s The Future of Film Is Female, and will hit theaters next month as part of the FOFIF’s fledgling distribution arm. Falconer’s film follows Hannah Peterson’s “The Graduates,” a similarly revelatory first feature that Coleman smartly snapped up and built a bespoke distribution plan around.
Per its official synopsis, the film is “a wistful, slice of life drama [that] follows the intertwined lives around Green Lake as a girl, Lu (Maren Heary) learns to sail, a boy, Jun (Jim Kaplan) fights for first chair, two sisters, Blue Jay (Tenley Kellogg) and Robin (Emily Hall) operate a bed and breakfast, and a fisherman, Finn (Dominic Bogart), is after the catch of his life.” Fellow filmmaker Joanna Hogg executive produced the film, and Falconer and Grant Ellison serve as producers.
As Coleman explained in an official statement, “Being able to support truly independent films, like Sierra Falconer‘s stellar debut feature is exactly why we started a distribution branch at The Future of Film Is Female. ‘Sunfish’ is a thoughtful, beautiful amalgam of four stories taking place simultaneously over one summer in Michigan; each monumental in their own way.”
In putting together the trailer for the film, Falconer was characteristically thoughtful about how best to sell her stories. “Approaching the trailer was difficult because of the structure of the film, it’s an anthology,” Falconer told IndieWire. “I didn’t want it to feel like a mini-anthology in the trailer, so what were were trying to put together was like a collage of the whole movie, and put people in the same space as much as possible. I hope people get an idea of the feeling of the lake, the tone of the film, the characters. It’s not a very plot-heavy trailer, but I think the tone is very accurate to the film. I hope it makes people want to come see the movie!”
The Future of Film Is Female will release the film in theaters across the U.S. beginning on Friday, September 12 at the IFC Center in New York. Additional cities will be added in the following weeks, including Los Angeles and a planned tour through the Midwest.
Check out the first trailer and poster for “Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake),” both IndieWire exclusives, below.
