Venice Winner 'Color of the Sun' Still Seeks US Distributor — SkimNews
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- "The Color of the Sun" won the FIPRESCI International Critics' Prize for Best Film in the Orizzonti section at the Venice Film Festival; the film is set in Okinawa and shot on 35mm by cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, a collaborator of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Luca Guadagnino, and M. Night Shyamalan.
- Director Xavier Tera, a Québécois photographer-turned-filmmaker who has lived and worked in East Asia for a decade, frames the story around Okinawan protagonist Kamei's coming-of-age amid long-standing American military bases on the island, drawing parallels to his own experience navigating identity in colonized Canada.
- Jeremy O. Harris attached as producer through bb2, the company he co-founded with Josh Godfrey after his HBO development deal wrapped, specifically to protect Tera's vision from financiers who pushed to "flip" the story by making a white character the lead because, as Harris put it, "that would've made a much more financially viable movie."
- Mukdeeprom landed on the project in between commitments to Frank Ocean's film and Weerasethakul's next feature after producer Stella Savino — a frequent Guadagnino collaborator — reached out before Tera had even mentioned being a fan; Tera described their conversations as revolving around energy and Buddhism, with Mukdeeprom's wife cooking Thai food at his restaurant.
- Tera's longtime business and life partner Janie Chartier (co-founder of Twin Brains) pushed the film through a production that included a "tiny budget" and the loss of their head of local production right before shooting; the two had a decade-long relationship that recently ended, and Tera called making the film with her "my childhood dream."
Why it matters: With distribution confirmed in co-producers Canada and Italy plus Japan but no US deal yet, a queer coming-of-age film centering an Okinawan, not white, protagonist goes without an American theatrical home — exactly the kind of "next one" Harris says specialty distributors are actively hunting for.
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