Sun
2024 · 7m · República Checa
Directed by Jakub Brokl
Genres: adventure, animation, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, dark, whimsical
A boy lives on a planet with no sunlight and decides to find the Sun. He and his little dog travel to the top of the great mountain where the Sun should be, but there an unpleasant surprise awaits them.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A kid-quest-to-find-the-sun sounds like saccharine children's book material, but Brokl boots you into genuine dread by the ending — the 'unpleasant surprise' isn't a twist for twist's sake, it's the film's actual argument about what we're willing to accept as home.
Formally situated in the tradition of philosophical animation—a lineage running from Harryhausen through contemporary Eastern European fabulism—with disciplined restraint in its visual language and a tonal architecture that earns its shift from whimsy to something far more unsettling.
The decision to keep the Sun itself off-screen until the revelation, trusting negative space and the characters' anticipation to carry seven minutes, is the kind of restraint that transforms a modest premise into something that haunts you long after the cut to black.