‘The Color of the Sun’ Review: A Teenager in Okinawa Navigates Grief and Longing in an Attractive but Undercooked Coming-of-Age Drama

‘The Color Of The Sun’ Review: Xavier Tera’s Beautiful Okinawa Tone Poem Is All Mood, Not Enough Substance

There’s a phrase that’s often used to describe films that has long vexed me: a tone poem. Shorthand for a film that foregrounds mood over plot, I’ve often found the term used to tell the viewer that a movie basically isn’t about a whole lot. It’s a metonym for pretty but, perhaps, empty. I only bring it up because the phrase came into my mind repeatedly while watching Xavier Tera’s Okinawa-set coming-of-age debut, “The Color of the Sun,” a film …

The Colour of the Sun Review: Okinawa’s Teens Scramble For Identity, Love And Dreams In A Quiet, Searching Masterwork

Venice Film Festival 2026| Towering over the Orizzonti competition, Xavier Tera’s debut is an intimately observed coming-of-age marvel, finding light amidst grief and teenage uncertainties.

‘The Color of the Sun’ Review: A Teenager in Okinawa Navigates Grief and Longing in an Attractive but Undercooked Coming-of-Age Drama

First-time feature filmmaker Xavier Tera's 'The Color of the Sun' is a tale of adolescent exploration set during one summer in Okinawa.

Venice Review: The Color of the Sun Finds Sayombhu Mukdeeprom Elevating a Prototypical Coming-of-Age Story

It’s been a year since Kamei Yara’s dad disappeared. The 16-year-old who lives on Okinawa’s main island has been a bit of a wreck since, but he’s holding it together on the surface in The Color of the Sun, writer-director Xavier Tera’s debut feature. As if teenage life isn’t difficult enough to navigate without the […] The post Venice Review: The Color of the Sun Finds Sayombhu Mukdeeprom Elevating a Prototypical Coming-of-Age Story first appear…

The Color of the Sun – first-look review

A sullen teenager living in Okinawa finds his life upended by the arrival of a boy raised on a nearby American airbase in Xavier Tera's feature debut. There's no disputing that Xavier Tera's feature debut is a good looking film; the photographer-turned-filmmaker captures the Japanese peninsula of Okinawa with unmistakable care, particularly during the fabled golden hour that bridges night and day. The area has a difficult relationship with ident…

‘The Color of the Sun’ Review: An Okinawa-Set Coming-of-Ager

Though the genre did of course exist before 2017, it feels as though Call Me By Your Name kicked off a boom in the dreamy, summertime coming-of-age movie, of the artier and indie-r variety. If you’ve traveled the festival circuit in the last decade or so, you’ve seen myriad examples of the form: teenagers in […]