Alienated Society, Distanced Viewer: Review of DON'T LET THE SUN
Don’t Let the Sun, Jacqueline Zünd’s first feature film, a co-production between Switzerland and Italy, premiered at the 2025 Locarno Film Festival and has now screened at Crossing Europe Film Festival Linz. The story is set in the near future, scarred by global warming, a place where living conditions have deteriorated to a point where people go to work at night and sleep by day, living in constant discomfort and threat from the sweltering heat. Zünd’s picture is a slow burner – pun intended – that’s built around Jonah (Georgian actor Levan Gelbakhiani, from And Then We Danced), a 28-year-old working for an agency that offers human relationships.
Being emotional support for others, he’s trying to fill their inner voids, taking up roles as a son, a boyfriend, and even a student for a professor. He’s mostly a blank slate, apparently unbothered by human emotions; he adapts to every client’s needs. Cleo (Agnese Claisse) hires Jonah to be the father for her daughter, Nika (Maria Pia Pepe). At first, the nine-year-old girl is a bit reluctant, but nevertheless, she accepts him, and they forge a close connection.
Zünd portrays a society that’s so alienated that it feels like people don’t really want to connect. Content in their solitude, they yield to the idea of paying someone to keep them company. The characters are deliberately constructed to be distant, not just towards each other but towards the audience, too. In the beginning Jonah rarely shows signs of emotion, but after meeting Nika something changes in him; it seems like he’s overwhelmed, flooded by repressed emotions he struggles to handle. It’s hard to discern his feelings, as he constantly maintains a straight face, leaving the audience wondering.
Most of the interactions happen either outside at night or inside apartments and restaurants, both with distinct visual approaches. The images shot in exteriors focus on the main characters, leaving the background blurry and highlighting the isolation in the society. Indoors - while the characters are shielded from the sun - the picture acquires a reddish hue, underlining the external conditions and giving the impression of all-enveloping heat. Outside, the city is abandoned, a desolate and timeworn landscape of overexposed images.
Zünd’s picture has thematic similarities with another recent European arthouse film, Bernhard Wenger’s 2024 title Peacock. Jonah and Matthias, the protagonist of Peacock, have very similar jobs, and what sets them apart is the director’s approach. Wenger’s perspective was mostly humorous, focusing on the absurdity of the situations, whereas Zünd’s direction is clearly dramatic and sombre. She doesn’t rely on dialogue; instead, she focuses on the characters’ emotional experiences, or rather a lack thereof, gradually moving towards them via tracking shots to create extreme close-ups.
Zünd’s direction conveys a society with little sentiment, and while this certainly fits the main theme, it won’t resonate with those audiences who seek to connect with the characters and become fully engaged in the story. But Don’t Let the Sun does have masterfully constructed imagery, a strong narrative, and an overall convincing atmosphere.