Where the Sun Shines Bright

Lam Can-zhao’s Where the Sun Shines Bright is a quiet, beautifully observed film that finds its strength in the simplicity of its storytelling. Set in a rural village in Chaozhou, in southern China, the 68-minute coming-of-age film follows an 18-year-old boy on the edge of adulthood who finds reflections of his own childhood in the lives of four children around him. Through their interconnected stories, the film explores childhood, family distance, migration, friendship, and growing up amid social change.

A village Lam knows from the inside

The village is Lam’s own territory. Born in Chaozhou in 1994, he left home at 18 to study in Guangzhou, and later returned with a film crew to make the short film A Bright Sunny Day, which he wrote, produced and edited, and which was selected for La Cinef at the 76th Cannes Film Festival. His next short, A Summer’s End Poem, won Best Short Film at the 74th Berlinale Generation Kplus. Where the Sun Shines Bright grows out of the same place and the same concern: the children who stay behind while their parents move to the cities for work. Lam wrote, directed and edited the film, a co-production between China, Switzerland, Canada and Malaysia.

Rather than relying on big dramatic moments, the film takes its time to explore its characters, their relationships and the circumstances surrounding them. There is a genuine sense of humanity running through the story, and it is often the smaller moments that carry the greatest emotional weight.

Four stories, one childhood

The individual stories are particularly effective because of their simplicity. In the first, seven-year-old Aileen sets off alone for the city carrying a red egg for her absent mother, and her journey becomes a touching portrait of longing. That chapter, Summer Delivery, began as a standalone short before becoming part of the feature. In When the Tiger Roars, twelve-year-old Dan struggles with bullying and with his relationship with his father. In Out of the Blue, a thirteen-year-old boy grows increasingly anxious about his changing voice, which threatens his chance at a singing competition that could reunite him with his parents, who work in faraway Beijing. And in Showtime, a teenage girl named Tia, stuck in a mining village plagued by nightly blackouts, expresses herself by dancing Michael Jackson’s moves on TikTok while adjusting to a new family situation, as a woman from the city named Wynne becomes her stepmother. Wynne is played by Chinese singer and actress Jin Sha.

One of the film’s greatest strengths is undoubtedly its young cast, most of them non-professional actors. Their performances have a wonderfully natural quality. Rather than feeling as though they are delivering carefully rehearsed lines, the young performers often seem simply to be living inside their characters and responding to the world around them. That gives the film an authenticity that would have been difficult to achieve with more polished performances.

The children are also given room to be children. There are moments of sadness and uncertainty, but there is humour, curiosity and playfulness as well. This balance matters, because Lam never treats childhood as simply an unhappy period. Instead, he captures the mixture of emotions that can exist at that age, sometimes within the same scene.

Understated but confident craft

The filmmaking is understated but confident, allowing the performances and atmosphere to speak for themselves. The cinematography by Gou Haokun and Pan Wenhua adds to the film’s appeal, capturing its world with a natural, intimate quality that draws you further into the story. Each chapter is given its own look, shifting between aspect ratios and between colour and black and white, with production design by Tiana Ni and a score by Tôn Thất An.

The film had its world premiere at the 48th Moscow International Film Festival in April 2026 and has since been screening on the international festival circuit, including in the International Competition at the fourth Bishkek International Film Festival. Along the way it has picked up Best Feature Film at the 13th Tripoli Film Festival, the Grand Prix for Best Film at the Buddhist International Film Festival in Tuva, and the Jury Prize for Best Feature at the Jordan Children and Youth’s Film Festival.

What stays with you most is the film’s warmth and authenticity. It doesn’t try to force an emotional response from the audience; instead, it allows the characters and their experiences to gradually make an impression. A thoughtful and beautifully crafted film from Lam Can-zhao, Where the Sun Shines Bright is the kind of movie that rewards patience and leaves you with plenty to reflect on after the credits roll.