SUN MOON Director Shares Inspiration Behind Her ‘Authentic Story’ of ‘Hope’
By Movieguide® Staff
Sydney Tooley, the director behind the latest Sony AFFIRM movie, SUN MOON, recently revealed how she relates to the movie’s story and themes.
The movie’s synopsis on Pure Flix reads: “Kelsey is running from failure, heartbreak and humiliation. In an attempt to understand God’s purpose for her life, she goes to Taiwan to teach English. Will her leap of faith pay off?”
The movie takes place in Taiwan, which is where Tooley taught for a year alongside her missionary parents after studying film in college.
“Right after college, I had studied film, and I was like, ‘I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m gonna go be a missionary,’” she told Movieguide®. “So I went out with my parents and I ended up teaching and so a lot of the film is autobiographical.”
“Even some of the actors were my students when I was teaching,” she added. “I loved Taiwan so much. I wanted to find a way to bring this culture to America, because I walked out of that year thinking, ‘Man, I would have missed this whole culture, how do I give back to this culture that I love so much in this place?’ So I ended up writing this film as my love letter back to Taiwan.”
What started out as a small, personal project turned into a much larger movie after Sony AFFIRM said they would back SUN MOON.
Despite the financial boost, Tooley said that she and her team still faced challenges during filming due to COVID-19.
“We sat for probably between seven to nine months in [Taiwan]. The studio asked… ‘are you gonna be able to complete the film?’ And I was able to say ‘yeah, my actress is with me. We’re still good.’”
However, soon Tooley and her crew faced another problem: visas.
“I went down to the embassy myself to talk to the Taiwanese embassy… and within 10 minutes I had a Visa in my hand—within a week my whole crew had it,” she said. “I love working with other cultures. There was a serious language barrier for sure because they speak Mandarin and I do not speak Mandarin. It was really interesting watching all the crews try to figure out how to work with each other because we had an American Crew, we had a Taiwanese crew, we had a Taiwanese-American Crew—bringing those teams together and being able to have them really appreciate the culture, and everybody on our team from America was very much open to the culture and wanted to explore.”
“I hope that when people watch it, they get an authentic feel for what that culture is like, that they can really connect with it,” Tooley said of what she hopes audiences takeaway from SUN MOON. “It also hopefully encourages people to step out of their comfort zone, maybe travel a little bit more and see the other cultures around them.”
The movie contains strong biblical themes and standing firm in faith despite life’s challenges. Tooley said that she hopes audiences can be encouraged to pursue faith and trust in God’s plan.
“I’d also wanted to try to make a film that could span across a Christian audience and a secular audience,” she added. I hope that Christian audiences, when they watch it will get the idea that God’s pretty unconventional. Your walk is not always easy, faith and jumping out in faith and being in faith is something that you have to find sometimes.”
“I feel like Kelsey is a character’s running is an avoidance of God,” she continued. “I’d like people to kind of connect with that. I would hope that this film also speaks to more secular audiences as well, that we don’t want to preach at you, but we want to show an authentic journey of someone’s life.”
Stream SUN MOON now at Pureflix.com.
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