Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2025 Sundance coverage. Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake) opens in theaters on September 12.
Filmmaker Sierra Falconer’s Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake) captures a bittersweet feeling. That feeling of endings and beginnings, happening at the same time. For eighty minutes, we watch four short stories unfold in and around Green Lake. One involves a young girl (Maren Heary) learning how to sail after being dumped at the doorstep of her grandparents’ lake house by her neglectful mother. Another concerns a young boy (Jim Kaplan) at the fancy summer camp on the other side of the lake. He’s facing intense pressure from his mother to make first chair violin in the camp orchestra. An extended sequence of him practicing is particularly tense. The third story features an overworked young mother (Karsen Liotta) seduced by adventure in the form of a charming, wayward bar patron (Dominic Bogart) and a once-in-a-lifetime fish to be caught. Finally, there’s the lovely tale of two sisters (Tenley Kellogg and Emily Hall) running a lakeside bed-and-breakfast, the older of the two teaching the younger every needed task to completion before leaving for college.
This is a heck of a feature debut from Falconer. There is a delicacy to every frame that feels incredibly confident. There are deeply memorable supporting turns from Marceline Hugot and Adam LeFevre as the grandparents in the first story (“Sunbird”), as well as a memorably comedic performance from old pro Wayne Duvall in the third. Small moments underline bigger themes throughout. In one scene in the fourth story (“Resident Bird”), the older sister instructs the younger to: “Always buy organic for out-of-state guests.” In the third short (“Two-Hearted”), our young mother declares with melancholy: “This lake, it’s like a black hole.” And then there’s that aforementioned practice sequence from “Summer Camp,” the second short. These all play like bittersweet passages from some Raymond Carver short story only recently discovered.
Cinematographer Marcus Patterson captures the lake like a secret, special place, aided immensely by Brian Steckler’s longing score. There is a distinct texture to the lives and places we visit in these interludes, all softly connected by the lake between them. Editor Chelsi Johnston deserves a lot of credit. So often small films like this are ignored on a technical level. There is a seamlessness to the narratives here, an overall aesthetic and edit that suggests the necessity of these four stories being told together, without ever shoving connectedness down our throats. Patterson also makes great, spare use of drone photography, so often over-relied on in modern filmmaking.
“Sunfish” and “Resident Bird” are the stand-outs, so it’s helpful they open and close the film. That said, Liotta in “Two-Hearted” gives the performance that will linger for some time. Within minutes we know who this person is and we empathize with her plight. And while “Two-Hearted” does not quite live up her lead turn, it deepens the legend of the titular lake a great deal.
When we talk about wishing there were more films about real people, Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake) is what we’re talking about.
Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake) premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.