Manitoba shines in sci-fi film Daughter of the Sun shows off province with arthouse flair By: Conrad Sweatman Posted: 2:00 AM CST Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024 Last Modified: 11:00 AM CST Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024 Updates

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Manitoba never looked so good.

Winnipeg-born Ryan Ward has directed, written and stars in a sumptuous Prairie-set sequel to his critically celebrated 2011 film Son of the Sunshine. Daughter of the Sun — which next week releases on platforms such as Apple TV+, Shaw, Telus and Bell in Canada, and Amazon and Tubi in the United States — was shot entirely in Manitoba and co-stars 16-year-old Nyah Perkin of Souris.

The film has caught the attention of Peter Farrelly, Oscar-winning director of The Green Book, who calls it, “Gorgeously shot. A very impressive movie.”

Daughter of the Sun’s trailer, with its muttered narration and saturated slow-mo shots of wheat stalks playing peekaboo with handsome faces and brilliant skies, invites comparisons to arthouse titan Terrence Malick (Days of Heaven, Badlands).

Ward doesn’t shirk the comparisons.

“I always found Manitoba a very beautiful place. My mom always said that the sky in Manitoba should be the eighth wonder of the world,” he says. “The esthetic of the film was to capture the beauty of the province and of the natural world. I’d say it’s heavily influenced by 1970s cinema, like Terrence Malick.”

Producer Mackenzie Leigh (Memory Pill Films) says the film’s striking style and regionalism were selling points for Telefilm and Manitoba Film and Music, both of which helped finance Daughter of the Sun.

“They were very interested in supporting this unique story from the Prairies,” she says. “Their attitude was: we don’t see this kind of thing that often in Manitoba.”

Based on the trailer, Daughter of the Sun is an obvious boon to the cinematic representation of a province with a (somewhat unfair) reputation for corny Hallmark movies. And those who regard Malick’s school of cinema as a treatment for insomnia should be encouraged to find that, for all its artsy flair, Daughter of the Sun is a sci-fi story with hints of Stephen King.

Ward plays a man with a disability, Tourette syndrome, and a volatile superpower, enabling him to heal others. His superpower wreaked havoc in the last film (Daughter of the Sun is the second part in a planned trilogy), and now he’s on the lam with his 12-year-old daughter, Hildie (Perkin). They shift from town to town, but his Tourette’s gets him in even more trouble than his superpower in the odd jobs he takes.

Hildie, who can tell she’s inheriting her father’s gifts, longs for normal teenage things like friends who aren’t deadly serious middle-aged men. She finds some in a group of outcasts in a remote Prairie countryside. But soon Hildie discovers they want to wield her family’s powers to their own selfish ends.

“We wanted to make a film where, yes, it was (about) genre,” says Ward. “And it’s worked very well for the film… We premièred at (genre film festival) Fantasia, and as soon as we kind of hit that, we were like, ‘OK, great, now this will be in the genre space.’”

Daughter of the Sun made its international première at the Berlin International Film Festival, and its Canadian première at Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival, where it took home an Audience Award for Best Canadian Feature — one of 30 awards or nominations picked up so far.

After its Winnipeg debut on Thursday, the film has a near-sold-out run in the southwestern Manitoba town of Souris, Perkin’s hometown.

Ward says Souris has rallied behind the young actor, and they’re doing a “red-carpet thing and a big, big to-do up there.”

For a film shot in CinemaScope, the big screen — and not just the major streaming platforms through which Daughter of the Sun can soon be seen — is a natural home for the locally made film, says Leigh.

“The duration of art is important to the (Canadian) public. It’s telling people where our values lie, what we think we should be looking at, what we think we should be enjoying on screen as a community together,” she says.

Ward mentions that alternative theatres across North America, including Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Washington, D.C., are starting to show Daughter of the Sun, and hopes the film will soon screen in Los Angeles.

“I think just the pride factor of having a Canada-wide, limited theatrical (release), and select cities in the U.S. as well, is important for stories like these that are small and grassroots and local,” Leigh says.

“And I think it’s important in the Canadian consciousness and art scene.”

conrad.sweatman@freepress.mb.ca