Fridrik Thor Fridriksson returns to the Festival with The Sunshine Boy, his first documentary since his debut Rock in Reykjavik. Though documentary is not a genre normally associated with Fridriksson, The Sunshine Boy is unmistakably his work, sharing themes with numerous of his other efforts. Like Angels of the Universe or Children of Nature (or Movie Days or Niceland), Fridriksson's latest focuses on the disenfranchised and how communication, or any fellow feeling, can be a near miraculous occurrence. In this particular case, “miracle” is an appropriate term: his subject is autism, a condition shrouded in mystery, uncertainty and, for the parents of the affected children, a debilitating sense of helplessness.
The Sunshine Boy follows Margrét Dagmar Ericsdóttir as she attempts to help her youngest son, Keli, who has been diagnosed as severely autistic. Unable to find adequate treatment in Iceland (and increasingly frustrated by conventional medicine's advice that she just reconcile herself to the fact that she'll never be able to communicate with her son), Ericsdóttir sets off to investigate alternative forms of therapy. She meets with a wide range of doctors exploring different approaches and other parents with autistic children, as well as several people who were once dismissed as hopeless cases. Most notable of these is the disarming and captivating Temple Grandin, an author and scientist who found a way to communicate despite the fact that virtually every doctor considered her a lost cause. Plain-spoken and direct, Grandin clearly defines the different ways by which autistic people might be able to communicate. Eventually, Ericsdóttir discovers a doctor, Soma Mukhopadhyay, who has developed a method called Rapid Prompting Technique that may allow her to speak with Keli.
The film provides an excellent, precise primer on the condition and the issues surrounding it: whether it's hereditary or caused by environmental factors; the problems with late diagnosis; and the lack of funding for alternative or, in some cases, any treatment.
Emotionally powerful and at the same time doggedly optimistic, The Sunshine Boy is both howl and hosanna.
Steve Gravestock
Fridrik Thor Fridriksson was born in Iceland and is a self-taught filmmaker. His second feature,
Children of Nature (91), was nominated for an Academy Award® for best foreign-language film. In addition to the documentary
Rock in Reykjavik (82), his other features include the Festival presentations
Movie Days (94),
Cold Fever (95),
Devil's Island (96),
Angels of the Universe (00),
Falcons (02),
Niceland (04) and
The Sunshine Boy (09).