George Jaques was 15 when his mum was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. “She battled for a long time and survived, and I’m very lucky,” says Jaques, a Screen International Star of Tomorrow in 2022, who channelled his fear of losing her into creative pursuits. He wrote plays, made short films, acted, even started his own production company at 16, before going on to write, direct and produce his first feature Black Dog, which was released in 2023.
Marinating ideas for his second, he had two disparate notions in mind. First, as an ambassador for Teenage Cancer Trust, Jaques was interested in writing a comedy about cancer. “But how the fuck do you write a comedy about cancer?” he laughs. “What you realise when you visit these [hospital] wards is that cancer is the least interesting thing about these young people. They’re so full of life, they’re so naughty, and I thought, where is this film?”
His second idea was to make an ensemble picture that harkened back to the ones he loved growing up — films like The Breakfast Club — bringing together some of the young UK talent he knew or had worked with. But it was only during post on Black Dog that his editor Caitlin Spiller mentioned she had cancer as a child and had attended “cancer camps”. The lightbulb went off and Jaques combined the two ideas into one. “She told me all these stories about her mate who used to pop his eye out, and people getting their first hand-job, and I was [like], ‘Wow, this is the film.’”
Sunny outlook
Jaques began writing, determined to eschew all cancer movie clichés — “I said, ‘I’m not going to do any long, drawn-out hospital scenes. I’m not going to have any bald kids. I’m going to make this feral’” — with Spiller pushing him to make it even naughtier and Rachael Hough, a consultant haematologist at University College London Hospital, advising on the technical details. The result is Sunny Dancer, which has its world premiere here tonight as the Generation 14plus strand’s opening film.
After Jaques finished the script, he sent it to Black Dog producer Ken Petrie and together they approached sales agents, with Embankment Films signing on, taking a package to Cannes 2024, where they brought on Night Train Media, TPC and Screen Scotland, and pre-sold Europe and Latin America.
Jaques had written one of the main parts for Ruby Stokes, who had appeared in Black Dog, but he did not have anyone in mind for the lead role of Ivy, a teenager in remission who begrudgingly attends her first cancer camp at the behest of her parents (James Norton and Baby Reindeer’s Jessica Gunning). “It was a complicated character for me, probably because everyone says Ivy is the most like me, which I’m taking as a compliment,” he reflects. “Then Bella’s name came up and I was like, ‘There’s no way they’ll do it.’”
Still, Jaques sent the script, a letter and a sizzle reel to The Last Of Us star Bella Ramsey via their agent. “I think they’re one of the most incredible young performers in the world, but I’ve always seen them in these massive worlds. I wanted to put them in a stripped-back world where it’s only about the acting. Then I got a text, ‘Bella loves it and wants to meet.’”
After a two-hour Zoom, Ramsey signed on, joining a cast that includes Daniel Quinn-Toye (Voltron), Conrad Khan, Earl Cave (Dune: Prophecy), newcomer Jasmine Elcock and Neil Patrick Harris as the camp leader.
Jaques shot for six weeks in March and April 2025 at Auchengillan Outdoor Centre near Loch Lomond, Scotland. “Lady Bird was a good reference because what I love about [that] and Juno is the culture is quite translatable,” he says. “You feel the transatlantic-ness of it. And that’s what I wanted to do with this. We tried to do that with the music, with the casting, with the locations. We tried to make it bright.”
True Brit Entertainment releases Sunny Dancer in the UK this summer, with other territories to be announced after Berlin. “It’s a film made by young people for young people,” says Jaques. “I wanted to make a film about joy. There’s so little joy in the world right now, and it’s such a hard place. When I go to the cinema, I want to disappear for a bit. I want to be in someone else’s shoes.”
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