After breaking out with his debut Wetlands, director David Wnendt returned to Sundance Film Festival with his English-language debut The Sunlit Night, starring Jenny Slate, Zach Galifianakis, Alex Sharp, and Gillian Anderson. The film follows Slate’s character as a woman who has reached a dead end in her life in America and ventures to a Norwegian island for an art residency that becomes much more strange than expected.
Following its premiere last year at Sundance, the adaptation of Rebecca Dinerstein’s novel is now set for a release next month, and the first trailer and poster have landed. Unfortunately, reviews for this one weren’t too positive across the board, but for Jenny Slate fans, it’s nice to see her in another leading role after Obvious Child.
See the trailer and poster below.
The Sunlit Night follows an aspiring painter (Slate) from New York City to the farthest reaches of Arctic Norway for an assignment she hopes will invigorate her work and expand her horizons. In a remote village, among the locals, she meets a fellow New Yorker (Sharp), who has come in search of a proper Viking funeral only to find that the Chief (Galifianakis) is but a re-enactor from Cincinnati. The eclectic crew ranges from “home” to “lost,” within the extreme and dazzling landscape of the Far North. Under a sun that never quite sets, and the high standards of an unforgiving mentor, Frances must navigate between ambition, desire, obligation, and risk in order to find a way forward.
The Sunlit Night arrives digitally on July 17.