EXCLUSIVE: Described as one of the year’s “hidden gems” by Berlinale chief Tricia Tuttle, Sunny Dancer, the debut feature by British actor-turned-filmmaker George Jaques, is heading into this year’s Berlinale with some buzz.
The film boasts an impressive list of high-profile contributors. Bella Ramsey, Neil Patrick Harris, Jessica Gunning, and James Norton star, while Este Haim, the Grammy-winning rocker of the eponymous band Haim, has composed the score alongside her longtime collaborator Zachary Dawes.
Sunny Dancer is Este’s latest credit as a screen composer after sidestepping into the field during the pandemic, first creating music for the Netflix series Maid, starring Margaret Qualley, before being approached to score numerous studio and indie projects. Her credits include Sony’s Anyone Buy You, co-scored with Christopher Stracey, Cooper Raiff’s Cha Cha Real Smooth, and You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, co-scored with Amanda Yamate. She also served as a music consultant for the second season of HBO’s The White Lotus.
“I grew up in LA in a place literally called Studio City, so I’ve always been surrounded by TV and movies,” Este tells Deadline of her deep connection to filmmaking ahead of her trip to Berlin for the Sunny Dancer premiere.
“Every kid in my class had a headshot. I was the only one who didn’t have one. But my parents took me to the local video store every week to pick out movies that we’d watch over the weekend. I always loved cinema.”
However, Este credits Ludwig Göransson, the Grammy and Oscar-winning musician best known for scoring Ryan Coogler and Christopher Nolan’s films, with sparking her interest in screen composition. Göransson worked with Este and her sisters, Alana and Danielle, who make up their band Haim, on their debut album Days Are Gone.
“He had just graduated from USC, and he was working on Community and had started on Childish Gambino with Donald Glover,” Este says of Göransson. “We met him in the lobby of a hotel we were playing in for like five people. He offered us his tiny studio to make music in, and we made our first EP in there with him.”
Este says Göransson would seamlessly move between scoring Community and producing tracks for the Haim and Childish Gambino albums.
“Watching him do that was so inspiring,” she explains. “Just seeing the ease with which music would flow out of him, and how cool it was to put music to picture. I’d never seen it in real time.”
Este Haim. Credit: Rebecca Sapp/Getty Images for The Recording Academy.
Rebecca Sapp/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
Directed by Jaques from a screenplay he also wrote, Sunny Dancer follows Ivy, a 17-year-old cancer survivor who struggles to adjust when her parents send her to a summer camp for kids affected by cancer. But as the weeks progress, she manages to find unexpected friends in an unlikely group of misfits.
Jaques approached Este to compose the film’s music after being connected through a mutual friend.
“We started talking about the premise of Sunny Dancer and the idea of young love,” Este says. “Everything that I write about in Haim is about love, heartbreak, longing, so this coming-of-age story kind of ticked all the boxes of all the things that I love making music about.”
Este describes her process of collaboration with Dawes on the film as experimental, with lots of “throwing spaghetti against the wall,” before slowly paring down the compositions to create a cohesive soundscape.
“With a lot of the initial stuff that we sent through, George said it sounded too American. It was a lot of acoustic guitar, and that wasn’t necessary,” Este explains. “There’s some of that in the movie, but there had to be other sounds peppered in there, like the beautiful piano. It all had to be the right tone.”
She adds: “A lot of score, especially now, is predominantly sound design. It is about melody and instrumentation, but it’s also playing with levels, sound, and mixing. I’m still learning with every new project. I used to be great on Final Cut Pro, but I’m not the best on Logic or Cubase. I know how to do it, but I want to get better. I want to be able to do it all.”
In the spirit of doing it all, I ask Este if she and her bandmates would ever step behind the camera together to create a full-scale music-film feature in the vein of films like Prince’s Purple Rain or Under the Cherry Moon. The trio has become renowned over the years for their unique music videos created in collaboration with filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson and Jake Schreier.
“I would love to do that. Alana is an incredible actress, and Danielle’s a great actress, too. Don’t sleep on Danielle,” Este says. Danielle and Este had small roles in Anderson’s 2021 feature Licorice Pizza, while Alana led the film alongside Cooper Hoffman. She also stars in the filmmaker’s latest, One Battle After Another.
“We talked about it as kids, and we used to make a lot of skits. But actually putting pen to paper and writing a musical about our band? Maybe when we’re a little older. But as of now, we’re all loving making music together, but also doing our respective things and knowing that we have the safety blanket of always coming back together.”
Sunny Dancer was produced by Jaques and Ken Petrie. Embankment is handling world sales. The film debuts Friday in Berlin.
Check out a teaser for the film above.