Editor’s Observe: This assessment was initially printed in the course of the 2024 Cannes Movie Competition. Movie Motion releases “My Sunshine” in theaters Friday, September 19, 2025.
As pretty and lilting as listening to Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” over a crackly report participant on a snow-flecked day, Japanese filmmaker Hiroshi Okuyama‘s second characteristic “My Sunshine” is a transferring coming-of-age drama about children going through as much as the troubles of maturity.
This gently composed story of an ice-skating coach on the island of Hokkaido, and his two younger pupils, has darker dynamics below its sleeve than the emotionally beneficiant time-to-face-the-music-of-growing-up story that’s on its floor. It’s instructed in furtive glances and silent pacts in opposition to a frost-dappled backdrop, the top of winter coming quickly, as two adolescents type a bond on the ice rink that complicates the personal lifetime of their teacher. Japan can be clever to submit “My Sunshine,” the second characteristic from “Jesus” director Okuyama, for the Greatest Worldwide Characteristic Oscar. Each the glass-half-full and the glass-half-empty corners of the viewers will resonate with Okuyama’s understated storytelling as this triad will get trickier because the film strikes alongside.
On Hokkaido, a world removed from the bustle of Japan, younger boy Takuya (Keitatsu Koshiyama) suffers nervousness at school and a speech obstacle, regardless of a wonder-eyed curiosity for the world as he’s transfixed by the flakes falling of a brand new winter. In the identical approach many people have been pressured by our dad and mom or by social pressures to be concerned in sports activities throughout grade college, he’s an unenthusiastic member of the hockey staff. There, on the ice, throughout one more sport faltered, he espies Sakura (Kiara Takanashi), a sublime peer pirouetting on the rink. She’s a determine skater, an extracurricular exercise seemingly extra most popular to hockey by Takuya, who appears palpably boxed in by taking part in one more boys’ sport. Okuyama’s movie doesn’t spare on the implications of Takuya craving to be a part of a sport that’s extra historically female-dominated, and that extends to the story of Sakura’s coach, Arakawa (Sôsuke Ikematsu).
He’s a onetime champion ice skater who’s deserted his goals of yonder days to now coach children at this explicit Hokkaido college. When not instructing, Arakawa drives the ice resurfacer listlessly earlier than going house to his live-in (and evidently lengthy lived-with) boyfriend. As “My Sunshine” unfolds and the seasons start to vary, Arakawa’s at-home relationship turns into more and more strained by the eventual bond he varieties with Takuya, whom he takes below his wing, and Sakura, whom Takuya idolizes. Sakura, using house from college together with her mom, spots Arakawa along with his companion of their automobile, taking survey of the state of affairs.
That Arakawa finally loans Takuya his previous skates suggests he sees a part of his previous self on this youthful boy, awakening tensions at house that have been possible already there to start with. The friendship of the trio, as they put together for an upcoming competitors and study one another’s rhythms throughout waltzes and skates on the ice, performs out at a mildly ambling tempo, set to oldies like The Zombies’ cowl of Little Anthony & the Imperials’ “Going Out of My Head.” Everyone seems to be certainly going out of their heads right here as jealousies set in that interrupt all their back-at-home lives.
What’s Sakura considering when she sees Arakawa get right into a automobile along with his boyfriend? Okuyama doesn’t inform us in any express phrases, although it’s apparent she’s challenged by this confrontation with the personal lives of adults. Whilst Sakura and Takuya develop an harmless friendship, it slowly begins to curdle as every one’s idolization of their teacher infects all their lives.
Okuyama based mostly this pretty and tenderly realized characteristic on his personal experiences as an elementary college determine skater. Although the nearer you look, the darker “My Sunshine” begins to get, as Arakawa’s personal life falls aside — even regardless of what’s an clearly long-held intimate relationship, he and his boyfriend sharing a cigarette on their balcony, or debating what’s left of their love in mattress. Working as his personal cinematographer, Okuyama paints “My Sunshine” as a plaintive story of ambitions dashed and a too-closeness forming in a boxed-in facet ratio. The filmmaker creates a tactile universe of nostalgia and remorse, heavier on suggestion than explication.
The director is clearly gifted with youngster actors, as each Koshiyama and Takanashi have only a few credit to their title, however handle to convey years’ price of watching life from past a pane of glass right here. Takuya, Sakura, and Arakawa are strangers drawn to one another for inexplicable causes. However anybody who’s suffered the pangs of grade college, and the desirous to be somebody aside from you might be, will relate to their emotional arcs. Snow melts and ice shatters, however the formative reminiscences of youth stick with you.
Grade: A-
“My Sunshine” premiered on the 2024 Cannes Movie Competition. Movie Motion opens the movie in choose U.S. theaters on Friday, September 19, 2025.