In this :60 titled “Mr. Sun” for Mollie’s Fund, director Kasra Farahani of production house Chromista takes viewers backwards in time through a young women’s emotional struggle with skin cancer. In the first six seconds, our attention is grabbed as a broken glass moves from the floor to a young girl’s hand who is staring up at us from a hospital bed. Her head shaved and oxygen tubes in her nose, all we hear is the sound of beeping from her heart rate monitor and the voice of a girl singing a cappella about Mr. Sun. She sits there, looking weak and defeated.
Everything continues to move backwards as we watch the young women in her hospital gown “un-shaving” her head. In the next shot she is in her bathroom with long flowing black hair, holding a chunk of it in her hands. Her hand moves in reverse back onto her head. We watch as she sits in a doctor’s office “un-hearing” seemingly terrible news and having a large mark on her arm being tested. The spot continues as we find her in her kitchen finding this spot on her arm for the first time, then chopping vegetables in blissful ignorance. In the final shot, the camera pans down from a blue sky and open ocean waters to the golden sand beach that our young girl lays in, singing the lyrics, soaking in the rays of the beautiful day, unaware of what the future holds. A message appears on screen which reads, “Just five sunburns increase your child’s risk of melanoma by 80%.”
Farahani gained inclusion last month in SHOOT’s 2016 New Directors Showcase. He is repped for commercials and branded content through Chromista, launched in 2013 by partners Darren Aronofsky, Sandy Haddad, Ted Robbins, and Scott Franklin.
