LUZ 5 suns

This international drama deals with estranged family and loss and efforts to heal, covering two different families who are a world apart. There is an element of technology in the form of virtual reality that links the two stories together. The first is set in the Chinese city of Chongqing about an older former gangster who has lost touch with his grown daughter who now makes a living streaming on the internet. In the second story a woman in Hong Kong travels to Paris to be with her stepmother whose health has started to fail. The stepmother is played by Isabelle Hubert who unfortunately couldn’t be at Sundance! The two stories are connected by a painting of a deer in the woods painted by the young woman’s deceased father and is now in a night club connected to the ex-gangster. Both individuals are drawn to a world in virtual reality called LUZ where the players interact and search for the mystical deer in the painting. There they meet and try to find answers to what they are searching for. The stories share themes of brokenness and healing between family members. At the Q & A writer/ director Flora Lau talked of the long process in making the movie and the iterations it went through. There were rewrites even after filming started where she made it less about the virtual world in favor of the family stories. I’d say it was a successful decision. The audience loved it. This movie is in both Chinese and French. Isabelle Hubert appeared in a recorded message greeting Sundance before the film. Wish she could have been there!