Sunburn: The Warmth of Youth
By Rohan Connolly
To me, summer is the worst season. I’m sorry, I know. I’ve never liked the heat. I’ve always loved the opportunities of summer: being off school, travelling, the freedom of it all, but I always find myself wishing for the cool temperatures of winter. But Serville Poblete’s Sunburn (2026) is the closest I’ve come to changing my opinion. Sunburn follows a simple premise: a group of youth living in St. James Town, a neighbourhood just outside of downtown Toronto, is forced outside during a heatwave due to a citywide power outage. Ranging from young kids tasting freedom for the first time to teenagers enjoying the last days before they enter adulthood, the group spends the day wandering the neighbourhood, talking to each other, and entertaining themselves as they do their best to survive the heat. The film evokes all the best parts of the summers from your childhood, even the sad parts that you look back on fondly.
The film is nostalgic, yet keeps moving forward. By forcing all of its characters outside with no access to an online world, it feels like it could be happening in any era. They wander the streets, play a day-long game of Manhunt, chase after the ice cream truck, bask in the sun, and have a water balloon fight all while coming to terms with the end of a chapter in their lives. Spiritually evoking films like Dazed and Confused (1993) and Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), Sunburn is a breath of fresh air in the “group of kids existing in the world” subgenre. The film is full of heart, and Poblete has a clear artistic vision for the project. During a post-screening Q&A, Poblete spoke of his visionary, angular, cinematography as representative of the fact that every being has a unique perspective. Each moment is shot from countless angles, whether we are looking up at people from the ground, looking down on them from the rooftop, or even flying around their heads through the eyes of a bug, Poblete uses all angles to his advantage and injects life into every scene. The film is sweaty and suffocating when the characters are indoors, harking back to the mundane moments of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989), and the pace slows as if the film doesn’t want to generate too much heat by moving too quickly, preserving its energy.
In Sunburn, a boy musters up the courage to finally talk to the girl he likes, two friends find out their favourite pool is closed for the day, one moves away, a girl learns how to ride a bike with the help of a new friend, they bond over the complex relationship they have with their older brothers, two friends discuss their futures, and a young girl sets off fireworks. All these moments on their own appear minute and potentially meaningless, but their value is not in their grand significance to the universe. These small moments create meaning to those living them. They all lead the characters to new eras: the closed pool is a space they can never go back to; as the two friends grow up and one moves away, they will never be able to go back to these childhood moments; and as the girl learns to ride a bike, she enters a new stage of youth, gains a newfound freedom, no longer relying on her parents or her older brother to take her places. The kids in the film are searching for relief from the heat, but also from the weight of the future. The characters across the neighbourhood all start whistling as a way to conjure up a breeze, and they all get a reprieve when the wind blows through their hair and cools their skin. For a brief moment, it jumpstarts their day of disconnection from the future, and centers them all in the moment and with each other.
After having its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Sunburn went on to win the award for Best Canadian Film and it is more than deserved. The film is a love letter to summer, to Toronto, and to youth. Following its win, the film was acquired for distribution by MoreThan Films, which means that while it is impossible to revisit moments of our own youth, we can revisit the last gasps of summers past on the big screen.