Sunnyland

It's no easy feat to capture the enigmatic, dreamlike magic of childhood in movie form, but Xavi Medina does just that with his feature debut. The filmmaker wrote, directed, shot, and edited this tale of five-year-old EZ (Isabella Wilkie), who lives in a Miami trailer park and has one simple goal in life: to see the ocean for the first time. Medina's ambling and contemplative cinema-verité style recalls the hazy, colorful wonderment of Sean Baker's The Florida Project (MVFF40), accentuated by an incisive undercurrent of poverty and the immigrant experience. In this tender drama's focus on EZ's boundless imagination, and in its insightful compassion for inattentive parents simply doing the best they can, Sunnyland brims with its own unique humanity - setting Medina apart as one to watch. -Aurora Amidon.