The Project

When her estranged older sister goes missing in the city, a sheltered Napa teen goes looking for her and discovers a group of sungazers who’ve found a darker side to the sun — and intend to use it.

The Inspiration

San Francisco is full of so many stories, so many ways to see living and the life of those around us. When we learned there were sungazers, people who stare at the sun because they believe it will sustain them by connecting them spiritually to the sun, writer/director Dave Moutray just had to tell a story about it. Lost in the Sun is that story. It follows a teenage girl looking for her estranged older sister in the Castro District of San Francisco. The tension rises when she discovers her missing sister has fallen in with a cult of sungazers.

While Lost In the Sun is a story of how far we’ll go to escape our past, it’s also about how believing fully, with everything inside of us, in something that can push us farther away from our the hard truth: that we are afraid of being alone. Whether it’s a soccer ball named Wilson, an omniscient deity who wrote a good book for us, or the sun itself, we’ll often seek a way to escape that feeling.

The Making

Filmed over the course of a year, Lost In the Sun presented significant challenges in authentically capturing a story of human despair without sacrificing the texture of complexity in the characters. We benefitted from the help of many talented Bay Area film professionals–editors, actors, shooters, and technicians– who all brought their A-game to help get this film made.

As is common with independent films, we incurred significant setbacks and challenges, like when the sound botched during our “first look” showing for friends, family, and cast. But their support and encouragement helped us keep at it until we got it right. And we might just be there!

The Result

Well, fingers crossed, the film will lock very very soon and coming to a theater near year. Here’s a sneak peek: