Also showing Oct 27
Based on a novel by the Czech investigative journalist Petra Procházková, My Sunny Maad sensitively portrays the complex environment of Kabul in the second decade of the 21st century. Herra (voiced by Zuzana Stivínová), a young Czech woman, falls in love with Afghani Nazir (Hynek Cermák) while studying in Prague. Moving to a post-Taliban Afghanistan with no sense of expectation, she must navigate her life as a bride in a foreign landscape. With a cautiously liberal grandfather, an unconventional adopted child, and half-sisters desperate to escape domestic violence, the family’s boundaries of social norms are pushed to the point of life-threatening danger. Animation director Michaela Pavlàtovà uses her recognized talent (an Oscar nomination, a Golden Bear in Berlin, and a Crystal in Annecy) to offer up a touching and enlightening tale that’s accessible to all audiences but which also manages to show welcomed restraint when it comes to the risk of melodrama and the brand of Western-world judgment that often hangs over a subject such as this. The director deftly sidesteps these pitfalls thanks to her deeply human approach and the simplicity that plays out perfectly in her rendering of the story through different modes of storytelling. ~OY