Written and Directed by Harley Chamandy | 76 min | ▲▲▲△△ | Digital and VOD

Montreal raised, New York-based director Harley Chamandy is receiving the 2024 Werner Herzog Film Prize for this feature, chosen by the German filmmaking legend himself. The award recognizes young directors, and Chamandy was in his early 20s when he made this impressive first feature.

It takes place at a log cabin on a lake in Quebec, where electronic music producer Allen (Vincent Leclerc) is grieving the passing of his wife, a famed singer, though the film is coy about the particulars of what happened to her. Mostly it’s concerned with Allen’s present day — he continues to work in his studio and receive friends, hanging out with his enormous Great Dane who practically runs away with the movie in only a few scenes. His unexpected friendship with two tween boys (impressively played by Miles Phoenix Foley and Liam Quiring-Nkindi) is the only thing giving him a genuine lift. All the while he keeps receiving strange phone calls, but when he picks up nobody is there.

Chamandy has said the film is about different kinds of love, from the kind that still exists even after death to the kind between childhood friends. All of that is plenty evident, though its Allen’s sadness in the absence of his wife that might be most pervasive.

The kinds of rough edges you’d expect from any first time feature film are present here, but any sense of inexperience  is overcome by a lovely sense of tone, of patience in the pacing, and nuance in the storytelling. Chamandy operates from an emotional place you’d expect a filmmaker twice his age may come from, and his fondness for analogue technology feels very much like an ode to quality cinema of the 20th Century. Allen Sunshine is quietly delightful.