Sun Kissed

When learning about their children's rare genetic disorder, they uncover a controversial genetic trail and deep-rooted cultural taboos.

Film Signature Image
Series
POV
Premiere Date
October 18, 2012
Length
60 minutes
Funding Initiative
Open Call
Producer/Director

Maya Stark

Producer/Director

Adi Lavy

Producer

Jocelyn S. Glatzer

Jocelyn Glatzer has directed, produced and edited documentary films for the past 20 years. She produced My Country, My Country, a 2007 Oscar-nominated cinema verite film about the first democratic elections in Iraq after the U.S. occupation; and she directed The Flute Player, about a survivor of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge genocide, which had its national Show more broadcast premiere on P.O.V. and was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Arts and Cultural Programming. After graduating from Hampshire College, she started working at Maysles Films and on dance programs for PBS's Great Performances series. Funded by the Ford Foundation, she was the outreach and education coordinator for Macky Alston's Family Name in the mid-90s. She then focused on projects about individuals whose life experiences told larger socio-political stories of our time. Currently, Glatzer is consulting on Match+, an HIV love story set in Chennai, India. She also is producing the ITVS-funded Sun Kissed, a feature-length documentary that follows the journey of a Navajo family with rare genetic disorder that makes exposure to sunlight fatal. Her films have screened at the Berlin Film Festival, New Directors/ New Films, SxSW, The Human Rights Watch Film Festival, and Full Frame, and have been broadcast around the world. She has garnered support from The Sundance Documentary Fund, ITVS, P.O.V., the LEF Foundation, and the Roy W. Dean Foundation, among others. Glatzer has served on a host of boards and juries, including the Texas Filmmakers Production Fund, founded by Richard Linklater; and Cambodian Living Arts, Arn Chorn Pond's project that supports master musicians and their students throughout Cambodia. In 2008 she received an achievement award from New England Women in Film. Show less

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The Film

When a Navajo couple's two children are born with a rare genetic disorder that renders any exposure to sunlight fatal, they embark on an unexpected journey to understand the disease that forces their children to live and die in the shadows. Sun Kissed follows Dory and Yolanda Sandoval as they navigate a maze of religious beliefs and medical systems, bravely tackling cultural taboos and uncovering a controversial genetic link to the past that re-defines who they are and what they believe in.

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