While the trailer for the romantic-triangle drama “The Sun Never Sets” ends in one of those swirling montages set to music that makes you want to run toward your future, Joe Swanberg‘s first feature in nearly a decade hardly plays up such easy catharses.
And while this Alaska-set romance’s logline — a woman is torn between the man she’s been in a long-term age-gap relationship with, and her ex-boyfriend — sounds like the stuff of soap operas, Swanberg’s film is less high-concept, and way more dare-we-say mumblecore in spirit.
This sharply drawn, Alaska-set romance stars a career-best Dakota Fanning as Wendy, who, per the synopsis, “believes she’s perfectly happy in her relationship, until her older boyfriend, Jack (Jake Johnson), who is divorced with children, insists they take a break to make sure she’s truly okay giving up on the idea of marriage and babies. During this time, Wendy unexpectedly runs into her ex, Chuck (Cory Michael Smith), who reignites her carefree and spontaneous side, and suddenly seems to want a family.”
What ensues is, of course, chaos off the rails, and in a film shot on location in Alaska and in glorious, gritty 35mm. Read IndieWire’s rave review by Christian Zilko out of the 2026 SXSW Film and TV Festival here.
Speaking of career-best work, Fanning on Wednesday was nominated for the Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie Emmy for Peacock’s “All Her Fault.”
Meanwhile, writer/director Swanberg hadn’t directed a feature proper since 2017’s “Win It All” for Netflix starring Jake Johnson. But he oversaw “Easy” on Netflix across three seasons from 2016 through 2019, a series shaped by the dissolution of his own relationship.
Swanberg’s retreat from feature directing happened around the time of the pandemic, and after his two-decade marriage to fellow filmmaker Kris Rey ended. Swanberg pivoted to for-hire TV directing jobs, work on his subscription-based video store Analog in his hometown of Chicago, and acting in front of the camera in microbudget projects. “The Sun Never Sets” brought him back to SXSW and feature directing.
“The Sun Never Sets” opens from Independent Film Company in Chicago on Friday, August 28 and nationally on Friday, September 4.
