Berlin Film Festival: Bella Ramsey unexpectedly enjoyed making coming-of-age cancer comedy

BERLIN — Making Sunny Dancer, a film about a summer camp for teenagers with cancer, turned out to be nothing like Bella Ramsey expected, and in the best possible way, the Game of Thrones star told Reuters ahead of its premiere on Friday.

“When the e-mail first came through about it, I was like, ‘I don’t think I’m going to like this,’” said the 22-year-old. “And it just was perfect, it just was completely not what I thought it was going to be, in the best way.”

Ramsey plays Ivy, a 17-year-old cancer survivor who wants nothing to do with the camp her parents have signed her up for.

But the teens she meets there are far from the fragile group she imagined — they sneak alcohol, fight, flirt, and generally cause trouble — and Ivy quickly sheds her reservations.

Sunny Dancer, which also stars Neil Patrick Harris, Ruby Stokes, and James Norton, opened the festival’s Generation 14plus sidebar for young adult cinema.

NO HOSPITAL CLICHES
“There are no hospital scenes in this. No, not a single one,” said Ramsey, who also starred in The Last of Us.

After doing the necessary sensitivity work early on, writer‑director George Jaques “freed” the cast to focus on fun, recalled the actor.

For his second feature, Mr. Jaques knew he wanted to make a cancer film, but as more of a comedy or coming-of-age film.

He drew on his experiences watching his mother fight cancer when he was a teen, and later working with a British charity for teenage cancer patients.

“You realize how naughty they are and how fun they are and how they get chemo done in Ed Hardy jeans and Jordans,” said Mr. Jaques.

He added that he wanted to break the stereotype that they’re only “poor sickly kids that lie on hospital beds.”

“They’re full of life,” he said. “And they’re so much more interesting than their diagnosis.” — Reuters