Monkey

The excellent documentary Dumbstruck shows us that many ventriloquists feel that they can make more unfiltered, even outrageous comments as their puppets than they can as themselves. We can think of narrative filmmaking as a kind of ventriloquism, with the actors who may look and sound very different expressing the words and emotions imagined by the writer and director. Sunlight is directed by Nina Conti, a British comedian and ventriloquist who made a documentary in 2012 about inheriting her mentor’s puppets, documents, and equipment, and attending the Vent Haven International Ventriloquist Convention in Kentucky. In her first narrative feature, Conti also stars as a sort of ventriloquist, appearing almost entirely dressed as a monkey, with a distinctly different – and more unfiltered and outrageous – voice than the one we finally hear as “herself.”