Blind Sun
Blind Sun
| 20 April 2016 (USA)
Blind Sun Trailers

​Greece. A seaside resort struck by a heavy heat wave. Water is scarce and violence is ready to explode. Ashraf, a solitary immigrant, is looking after a villa while its owners are away. On a dusty road crushed by the sun, he is stopped by a police officer for an identity check...

Reviews
WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.
ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.
Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
Janis One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.
thesar-2 If the extreme cold can make some crazy, the exact opposite is also true. I know; I go bonkers during the daily 100-120 degree, 6+ months here in Arizona year after year.So, since we're going through yet another gut-punching hot and humid summer, I wanted to watch a Horror-Heat-Wave movie and BAM!, coincidentally, the first category on my Shudder Online Horror Movie Streaming service is a group of Horror-Heat-Wave flicks. And the first one was one I hadn't seen and seemed the most interesting.Blind Sun felt extremely real for someone like us Phoenicians. They did an excellent job on how hot a desert town can get. It was almost too real for me. Well, the hot parts, anyways.Slowly, this all-but drifter turned house-sitter loses his mind in the heat. The house he's staying in is supposed to be very richy, despite the poverty town surrounding it, but the A/C keeps going out, the water is turned on/off and even the pool is a big no-no for the fact the town's rationing H20. As stated, it's a slow-burner, no pun and this man dives deeper and deeper into madness. Live one summer here in Phoenix, and yeah, you'll understand. While the final act went a little wacko for me, it was a decent movie to watch to know what the hot desert feels like.***Final thoughts: Oh, and just to clarify, our Phoenician summers are basically March through November with the first and last month somewhat pleasant, but still can be in the 100s.
pdlussier1 A slow burn. I dare say it because here it's not a metaphorical cliché, it's the actual plot of this indie!Set in Greece in a near dystopic future, we follow Ashraf Idriss (Palestinian actor Ziad Bakri), an immigrant hired to house-sit a villa for the summer, ensuring its safety amidst rising hooliganism and brutality whilst personally suffering the oppression that attempts to counter the tense lawlessness of a heat-wave-baked world increasingly deprived of its primary resource: water. Sure enough, the standoffish Ashraf faces increasing threats, scared to be in the villa and afraid to act after having lost his papers to a racist cop, but what's a real menace and what results out of a slowly baking brain? Told through careful cinematography, editing, and sensibility that lean towards art-house minimalism, this first-time feature for Joyce A. Nashawati marks this Lebanese director as someone possessing tremendous flair for the deeply nuanced yet sharp socio-political allegory, the kind that lets one get away with more style then story.The horror classification given by some (see Shudder.com) is believable. The menace that looms throughout genuinely takes hold midway and brings us to chilling moments, both of real fear and psychological unease. There's an unsettling atmosphere that reigns, set both by an intriguing soundtrack and a keen exploitation of light in establishing either the threat of a sun-drenched world or of those lurking in shadows.A tense, unnerving visual treat with a disturbing end, my only complaint is that it's often too easy to forget just how water-deprived and hot a world Ashraf faces and it's never quite justified why he seems to suffer more than all. Watching his "burnout" is engrossing, but we never fully embark on his ride that leads to his solution, albeit we certainly do feel his relief afterwards (up to a point) for, though he's hardly the most likable and pet- friendly of fellows, he does earn our sympathy. Well worth a watch!
gimosele-08408 Blind sun is as close to a thriller as Wong Kar Wai's "2046" to a sci-fi movie (which it is, but hey!). It is surely 'old school', if only for the high quality. To me, Blind Sun is all about the sun- sterilized atmosphere. The settings are unsettling: useless luxury that becomes a burden. I felt the space capsule isolation. Think of The Shining, Alien or even more the Cube. None of the horror, though. The angst comes from the urge to return over and over to a hostile chamber (to survive or to be doomed?). The sun is hostile, water is a dangerous precious (everything but purifying), the secondary characters seem to have all a dual nature: mundane and symbolic, walking antonomasias of who they are. From universal, to stereotyped, to grotesque. They may as well exist without a given name. In this visually amazing picture I found the pace very different from the cinematography I am getting used to lately. Here the film plays in 1970 terms, like an early Peter Weir or a gore-less Fulci (a hint of the latter accidentally suggested by an occasional hairdo). Every frame is deliberately beautiful, but it is a bitter beauty, the sort you experience smelling wild herbs. To take it in, you will breath deeply and then you might find yourself totally into the story like a compassionate but helpless passerby, or the opposite, obliviously distanced from the scene like this sun. This sun is a fierce star and this Earth is a planet with a toxic atmosphere and with an impossiblé gravity; returning to the infested capsule really seems the only way to buy time. A past hardship that is not even hinted at is immediately inferred, and makes the unthinkable almost tolerable.
mario_c Water as precious as gold! It's not a new idea and it might be quite a reality in a future not so far... BLIND SUN begins with this premise. In a remote region of Greece a strong heat wave make portable water a precious thing. To reinforce that idea there's a multinational company, which distributes water to the population, called "Bluegold"! The two elements, heat/fire and water are constant in the movie, as they represent two main forces of life! And healthiness... including psychological healthiness...The heat wave and the lack of water are just the plot background to what truly is a psychological thriller and a perfect slow burner! In fact BLIND SUN is a mystery thriller where the pace is really slow and many scenes are almost contemplative (look at those beautiful landscape shots and that sunshine!) but the tension is growing scene by scene in a slow but effective way! The characters aren't many, it's all around ASHRAF, the main character, and about what he sees and thinks... we "see" the plot through his mind... but it's not easy to understand a mind affected by extreme heat and thirstiness...To sum up BLIND SUN is a mystery thriller with a great cinematography (nice camera details and beautiful scenarios) and a (very!) open ending...