Musician and composer Ethan Rose is creating music for Allen Sunshine, a movie that starts production soon in Quebec.
The film will be directed by Montreal native Harley Chamandy and shot on Super 16mm film by cinematographer Kenny Suleimanagich.
“It’s very heavily music-based,” Chamandy told iHeartRadio.ca of the project. “Ethan Rose is a phenomenal artist.”
In Allen Sunshine, homegrown actor Vincent Leclerc (2018’s The Fall of the American Empire) stars as a former music industry mogul who retreats to his lake house to grieve the death of his wife, a famous singer. According to a description of the film, “he copes by composing ambient-electronic music and nurturing a friendship with two young boys whom he meets out on the lake fishing.”
Catherine Souffront is the female lead.
Rose is an experimental music creator from Portland, Oregon who has released several albums and has featured his work in gallery installations. He has scored several films, including the 2020 Dutch film Magic Mountain, and his "Song One" appears on the soundtrack to Gus Van Zant’s 2007 film Paranoid Park.
Allen Sunshine was scheduled to shoot in New York's Adirondacks last year but was delayed due to COVID-19. Instead, it will be filmed in the Eastern Townships south of Montreal. According to ACTRA, production is scheduled for May 24 to June 22 but Chamandy declined to confirm the timeline.
Allen Sunshine is Chamandy’s first feature film. He has helmed several shorts that did the festival circuit. His newest film is Where It's Beautiful When It Rains starring 10-year-old Benjamin Pajak, who is making his Broadway debut opposite Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster in The Music Man.