Sunshine Express

Participants assigned a specific character in a role-playing game undertake a fictional train journey to an island, in order to win a cash prize, only for the competition to become a microcosm of the limitations they experience in their real lives.

The competitors in an unnamed role-playing game arrive at a departure area where an inspector checks their ID and informs them of the character they are to play before they board a fake train journeying to the fictional island of Hermia. To win, they must remain in character and fulfil any tasks they have been set. But as the train departs, some contestants begin to suspect that the game is more than it seems, and what appeared to be a soundstage construct transforms into something unsettlingly real, with its true destination unknown.

Amirali Navaee’s Sunshine Express is a sumptuous allegory, examining how totalitarian systems sustain themselves through collective complicity. Navaee combines this with the competitive elements of a reality game show and more than a little kafka to create a world that reflects on the lives of the people playing the characters. The theatrical role-play offers no freedom, only heightened entrapment, as contestants navigate a world where the notion of choice is an illusion and coercion is not always imposed by force, but through psychological and emotional manipulation. In a world ruled by fear, Navaee’s increasingly taut drama suggests that even the virtuous can be driven to perform the cruellest acts.

– Vanja Kaludjercic

Trailer

Interview

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