Film Archive

Things Behind the Sun

Forum of Independents 2001 / Things Behind the Sun / USA 2001

Synopsis

A sleepy, humid Florida beach town. Sherry is an up-and-coming rock singer-songwriter with a hard-living Janis Joplin-like reputation. Owen is a young music journalist looking for a big story. He’s been assigned to write his next piece on Sherry’s first break-out radio hit. When their paths cross, it soon becomes clear that Sherry and Owen have much more in common than a passion for music: they also share a terrible secret both have been running from for most of their lives. Now it is time to unravel the terrifying silence and tell the truth, if they dare. Drawing from personal experience, Allison Anders brings an achingly true story about the far-reaching consequences of rape and the dangers of keeping quiet.

About the film

100 min / Black & white, 35 mm

Director Mary Allison Anders / Screenplay Mary Allison Anders, Kurt Voss / Dir. of Photography Terry Stacey / Music Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranalda / Editor Chris Figler / Producer Daniel Hassid, Robin Alper, Doug Mankoff / Production Echo Lake Productions, Sidekick Entertainment / Cast Kim Dickens, Gabriel Mann, Eric Stoltz, Elisabeth Peňa, Rosanna Arquette

About the director

Allison Anders was born in Ashland, Kentucky and spent her adolescence running away from home and hitchhiking around the country, sometimes ending up in jail or an institution. At 18, she left for England and returned with a baby girl. She settled in LA, worked as a midwife and a waitress in a bar, while studying philosophy and writing poetry. She decided to study film at UCLA, where she shot her first film on Super 8, Nobody Home. Anders is the mother of three children. Films: Border Radio (with Kurt Voss and Dean Lent, 1989), Gas Food Lodging (1992), Mi Vida Loca (1993), Four Rooms (episode The Missing Ingredient, 1995), Grace of My Heart (1996), Sugar Town (with Kurt Voss, 1999), Things Behind the Sun (2001).