In Kunsang Kyirong’s feature 100 Sunset, the camera roots itself deep within a tight-knit community of Tibetan immigrants in Toronto, the film taking place during the dead of winter in the titular (albeit fictional) housing complex in the Parkdale neighborhood. The CN Tower looms somewhere in the distance, but this tourist attraction is out of sight and out of mind for the film’s residents. Kyirong instead plants her film within local community centers, Tibetan restaurants, and apartments with balconies and Dharma displays. With a fly-on-the-wall touch that is as intimate as it is elusive, 100 Sunset works both as a nuanced character study of its protagonist Kunsel (Tenzin Kunsel) and as a portrait of a community too often overlooked.
Kunsel emerges early on as a disgruntled teen. Like Michel in Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket, she is marked by her silence and her inclination toward petty theft. First, she snatches a DV minicamera from Gyatso (Tsering Gyatso), then she steals a sacred nine-eyed Dzi stone from another resident during a party. Rather than dramatizing crime with suspense or spectacle, Kyirong focuses on the disciplined nature of Kunsel’s pickpocketing, leaving her intentions deliberately ambiguous, if not somewhat unprovoked. One theory is that she favors personal items: Gyatso’s camera, for instance, contains footage of his ex-wife. Another connection seems to lie in objects bought after securing a Dukuti payout — the informal, trust-based rotating credit system that her Uncle Geysar (Tsering Bawa) helps organize. Perhaps Kunsel wants to retaliate against her family. At school and at home, she comes across as sullen and introverted. She rarely speaks, and her struggle to learn English renders her voluntarily mute in two languages. Despite these deft touches, her compulsions remain unexplained, yet her thefts register less as survival tactics than as small acts of defiance against her community.
The arrival of Passang (Sonam Choekyi), a 25-year-old recent immigrant married to an older man, exacerbates the tension. The two young women become friends and slowly differentiate themselves against the residents of 100 Sunset. Unlike others in their hive mind community, which seems intent on staying indoors, Kunsel and Passang travel all over the city. There are long passages set on Toronto’s subway system, and it’s here that Kunsel is struck by cinephilia. She’s not wasting her time making TikToks, but instead shoots everything on her stolen camera and, for the first time, opens up. The images she records are woven into the narrative like chapters: inky and impressionistic. They initially resemble forgotten home videos, before subtly transforming into quasi-surveillance studies. She shoots her friend up close and in person with permission, but soon Kunsel blurs these boundaries by secretly shooting Passang from the opposite side of the apartment block. Through the camcorder’s lens, Kunsel renegotiates her place in the world. She turns observation into a form of agency and quiet rebellion, but her recordings are invasive. It’s only a matter of time before her artistic obsession brings about her comeuppance.
DOP Nikolay Michaylov mirrors Kunsel’s movement like a dance, his lens quietly observing every detail of the world, emphasizing both intimacy and emotional nuance. Michaylov is perhaps best known for his collaboration with Kazik Radwanski on Anne at 13,000 Feet and Matt and Mara, and in those films, he captures Deragh Campbell — known for playing introverted characters — from every angle. Fleeting gestures, subtle glances, and the quiet rhythms of daily life similarly evoke the character of Kunsel. Michaylov’s lens delicately highlights the protagonist’s growing fascination with Passang, using racked-focus shot/reverse-shot sequences to subtly signal that Passang is always the object of Kunsel’s attention. It remains unclear whether Kunsel’s relationship with Passang is explicitly queer, but the lingering attention and small gestures she directs toward her suggest a quiet, unspoken desire that emerges as part of her coming of age.
Eventually, after much consideration and waning trust, Kunsel and Passang decide to steal the Dukuti money. In most films, a heist would constitute the central spectacle, especially when the plan goes awry, but in Kyirong’s quiet, understated film, the event quickly recedes into the background. Passang replaces Kunsel as the film’s greatest mystery. That being said, Kunsel’s place in the world is still somewhat unresolved. Her camcorder, however, poses a compelling question: can the camera actually capture a person and reveal their hidden desires? For most people, the answer is no, but for Kunsel, the answer is yes. Rendered ostensibly mute by society, the camera becomes both her voice and her instrument of revelation, exposing her frustrations and desires when words cannot suffice. This astute observation of not only the human condition but also the immigrant experience casts 100 Sunset as a promising debut from a filmmaker with a distinctly minimalist yet confident vision.
Published as part of TIFF 2025 — Dispatch 6.
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