Chasing the Sun
2023 · 14m · Estados Unidos
Directed by Jeremy Cloe
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, musical
Tones: contemplative, tender
A young line cook feels trapped working in his father's restaurant, until an accident leaves him temporarily blind and emboldens him to pursue his true passion, music, regardless of what his father may think.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Disability-as-epiphany is a well-worn shortcut, and this film doesn't subvert it—it leans into it. The premise wants to be transgressive but settles for therapeutic, which is precisely the kind of consensus uplift that makes me sleep.
Cloe demonstrates a assured visual language rooted in the American indie tradition—the wounded-son-and-stern-father dynamic recalls a lineage from Boyle to Reichardt—though the film's emotional architecture feels slightly more earnest than its formal sophistication can quite sustain.
The real work here lives in the sound design: how Cloe uses ambient restaurant noise and silence to mark the protagonist's transition from trapped to listening, a choice that transforms what could've been sentimental into something genuinely textured and earned.