Read @ Joe’s

Title: Sun Never Again (2024) Director: David Jovanović Writers: David Jovanović Studio: Pointless Films IMDb Plot: The film is about a father, Vid, who is grappling with the threat of a corporate iron ore mine encroaching near his home. He finds hope and resilience through his young son’s imagination, which transforms their grim reality with a touch of optimism, fairy tales, and mysticism. Joe Says: This is a striking debut feature.

There is power in imagination. There is also power in resilience. But the pull toward surrender can be just as strong, especially when family survival is at stake. These forces are at the heart of Serbian filmmaker David Jovanović’s striking debut feature, Sun Never Again.

Sun Never Again unfolds in a rural village on the edge of a mine. Some residents accept the corporate buyout, abandoning their homes to escape the pollution and the concussive blasts of excavation. Vid (incredibly brought to life by Dušan Jović) is a stubborn man who refuses to accept his way of life is suffocating one breath at a time. Dule (Rastko Racić), views his father with wide-eyed wonder as a hero. Together, they work on building a greenhouse. For Vid, this an act of futile defiance against encroaching ruin; for Dule, a sanctuary of imagination where flowers bloom forever and hummingbirds never die. Ada (Natasa Marković), the matriarch of the story, sees only exhaustion and futility. She longs for release.

Jovanović beautifully crafts his movie with slow, elegant pauses making the mundane magical: rain splattering on bricks; a dripping spigot; limbs of a tree swaying against a gray sky. These quiet scenes are beautiful and tie together a sense of fragile harmony that are at odds with the story of disruption all around them. 

Narratively, Sun Never Again occasionally falters under its own weight. In documenting the lives of these villagers, Jovanović easily gets wrapped up in their stories. Scenes linger: the breaking down of a house; a drawn-out farewell; an accordion that refuses to end. Yet these longueurs are balanced by moments of piercing clarity: Vid’s alcoholic unraveling; Dule’s visit to a church; a haunting funeral scene. Jovanović’s eye never strays far from the tense duality of both perspectives; of wonder and despair.

Sun Never Again is a film of contradictions: Old World traditions colliding with corporate modernity; the defiance of adulthood clashing with the imagination of youth. At times raw, at times lyrical, Jovanović captures both the beauty and the brutality of lives lived under corporate siege. This is a debut that insists on the dignity of holding on, even as the world exhales in surrender.