Each year, filmmakers flock to France to attend one of the most prestigious film festivals, the Cannes International Film Festival. Among the collection of storytellers is Reuben Hamlyn, who premiered his latest short film, Sunday’s Children, at the 79th Cannes Film Festival. The short version is that the film is about a man who is desperate to become a father and, over a weekend, falls head over heels for a woman who believes that God has given her a sign that she is never to have children. However, as is the case with most short films, woven in the confines of 19 minutes, the story is much deeper than that. Written and directed by Hamlyn, Sunday’s Children uses its time to explore generational divides, signs and meaning-making, and the gulf between desire and destiny. I sat down with Reuben Hamlyn to discuss his short film, the fairytale-like imagery, and whether his lead character is a monster or just misguided.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Kit Stone: Let’s talk about the imagery. It feels almost fairytale-like at the beginning, but towards the end reads more like a fable. The idea that a fairytale gives a sort of happy ending, but a fable gives a life lesson, is that how you view the story? And is that the choice for the associated imagery?
Reuben Hamlyn: Yeah, I think so. I wanted the film to turn at the end and not fulfill the expectations it sets at the beginning. And I think there are life lessons to be had in the film, although I don’t think there’s one single life lesson. I think the main character has a reckoning and learns something about himself. But it’s not something I think necessarily is going to be universalized because his behaviors and who he is are very particular to this specific character that we’ve created over the course of the movie.
But I do think that there are lessons I hope that people glean from the movie, lessons that could be useful. But also, I don’t want it to be didactic or prescriptive, and people can live their lives and make the decisions they want to make. I hope it’s a movie that encourages introspection because I think that’s a very valuable activity that we should all be engaging in a little bit more.
KS: And the title, Sunday’s Children, does that go with that sort of imagery, or where did that title come from?
RH: I like the title because it’s from the nursery rhyme. And at the same time … I mean, in a more literal sense, the film unfolds on Sunday. The two characters in it are very playful and infantile, even though they’re being adults who are sort of considering whether or not to have children. But Sunday is also God’s day, but then also the last day of the week, and it’s kind of about … I wanted there to be this ambient mood of the world ending and how that impacts the way that we envisage our lives. And so by being the last day … Sunday, the last day of the week, it connotes a finality, I guess.
KS: So the opening shot almost felt like a thesis statement because you have the cat in focus and then a relationship falling apart in the background with Dennis and Annie. And by the time the camera finally pulls back, it’s just Dennis alone on the couch. And in watching it a few times, it almost seems like he can only see clearly when it’s too late. How much of the film’s DNA was in that shot for you?
RH: That’s a really interesting perspective on it. And I think you’re so right, what a great question. I think the first thing is I wanted the opening shot to really communicate the tone very, very quickly. And I think in some ways the tone of the film is contained within a cat, something which is seemingly very cute and sweet, but there’s something wrong with it. And something that’s quite disconcerting about it. And that, to me, projects the tone of the film going forward. It kind of warns you about what the ending is going to be.
It is also totally right in that Dennis is blind to the things that he needs to be caring for. And so we only really see them in the same frame at the very end of that shot because he’s been too distracted by his own immediate needs and desires to really care for this thing, which is very vulnerable. And again, I think that does project across the rest of the film. I’ve always found shaky cats, cats with cerebellar hypoplasia, like adorable. And was like, you should put the things that you love in your movies when they can be put in there. And so yeah, I wanted to give a chance to give us a cat with cerebellar hypoplasia its moment in the limelight. And we are very, very happy to Jingle and Jangle for giving me the opportunity to actually finally put one in a film.
KS: I love that. I want to ask a little bit about signs and meaning-making. Kasha interprets a miscarriage as a sign not to have children. Dennis sees her back scratches and what he feels is a sign to have kids. And to me, it’s sort of touching on the millennial need to justify or find meaning in things that might be just chaos. Can you talk a little bit about that? Am I on the right track?
RH: You are totally on the right track. Yeah, it’s really something that I wanted to explore. I think that the film is a lot about how we create narratives and create a sense of meaning for our own instinctive desires and what causes those desires. And I think it’s like I really wanted to look at the way that when we, in the stories of our lives that we tell to ourselves or tell to other people, we can only be very reductive about it because you can’t speak forever. And so you have to package your life in a succinct way.
And so when you make a big decision, there is a confluence of different influences that are leading you to this decision and yet you end up telling this story about what led you to that choice in a way that it becomes slimmer and slimmer and slimmer because you have this kind of rehearsed package of how you communicate that to your interlocutor. And I think that we approach signs in a similar way because I think that these signs are just like vessels for our own desire and we project onto them.
And so I think the same sign can be read in many, many, many ways. But depending on our position and what our needs and our wants are, our worldview is we’ll invest different meaning into the same sign that we encounter. And so yeah, I wanted to explore that in the film with the characters, to confrontations with different signs in their lives.
KS: Generational divide feels like a little bit of an undercurrent with the voiceover calling back to what Dennis’ parents experienced. And how now that he’s their age, their blueprint seems a bit outdated. Was that gap also something that you wanted to explore? And how the world is for us now versus how it was for them?
RH: Yeah, totally. I mean, I think this is something that really fascinates me and is something which I’m actually bringing into the next project that I’m developing. But how, throughout the 20th century, I think there was this kind of blind optimism about the future. I think that everyone believed that the future would be better. It was like the guiding principles of so many ideologies, even if you’re a capitalist or a communist. I mean, I do think there are people in the world who didn’t have the privilege of being able to believe that the future would be better. But a huge swathe of the population did what I guided by this kind of blind belief in a better future. And we’ve lost that over the last 20 years.
And so I think that now, as well as all the other contributing factors to this decision of whether or not to have children or the decision to do this or that with your life, we also have this other kind of variable, which is your sense of belief in the future of what will unfold in the future. And so that’s something I wanted to bring into the film, the sense of how do we act, how do we envisage our lives when we are facing the possibility of societal collapse.
KS: As a woman watching this, the asymmetry of the experience feels different. Dennis’s previous girlfriend, Annie, had an abortion. Kasha experiences a miscarriage. These women’s bodies bear everything. Meanwhile, Dennis just wants, almost blindly. What portrait were you trying to paint through the juxtaposition of experiences?
RH: Yeah, I mean, the film is not shot in a particularly subjective way, and yet we are mostly with Dennis’s POV. Because I ultimately wanted it to be a portrait of this character who’s slightly not malevolent, but unable to assimilate this sort of … Or compromise with the needs and wants and desires of the people that he becomes close to in life.
And so for me, he’s a character who’s able to … We can empathize with in a way because he’s unable to keep things that are close to him and he is ultimately left alone. But he really needs to be condemned, and I hope to condemn him in the film as someone whose inability or incapacity for selflessness and empathy with the people around him leads him to cause great harm in their lives. And so yeah, that’s something that I wanted to explore in the film.
I also wanted to create this parallel between, for example, in the first instance of Annie having the abortion without consulting him. Which I, of course, think is the right thing. I think women should always have the right to decide because they’re the person who’s going to carry the fetus or child to term, depending on how you see it.
At the same time, it’s like men do have an emotional investment in that child or that fetus. You can have a mourning response, and I think that’s totally reasonable. But if you then transpose this into this other sort of situation where Dennis feels that he should have had more right over the say of what happened to that child, into the event which happens at the end of the film, the whole idea sort of collapses. And of course, there’s no instance where a man could have any say over what happens to a woman’s body. And so I wanted to have these two things, which rhyme at the beginning and the end of the movie.
KS: Was there a scene you found yourself rewriting the most? Or one that changed completely from script to shoot to edit?
RH: We actually changed quite a lot of the dialogue in the forest scene. A bunch of that is ADR. What I originally wrote wasn’t working. And I felt that on the day that I was forcing the actors to say things that they didn’t believe in. And so we were a bit rushed, and so I didn’t have time to pivot on the day. But fortunately, because of the way the film is shot, I was able to rewrite elements of that, and because of the great work of our very patient sound designer, David Doubtfire, we managed to make that scene work with actually like maybe 20% of its new dialogue, maybe more, 40%.
KS: You said Dennis sees his own desire as destiny, and the short seems to be examining parenthood. But also the gulf between that desire and actually being suited for it. What about that conflict did you want to write about? Because even at the end, with what happens at the end that I won’t say, it’s like he couldn’t even … What’s going on?
RH: Completely. I mean, obviously, I think the main focus of the film is the sort of harm that can be caused to people around you when you treat your own desire as destiny. But the other thing is, if you treat your own desire as destiny, then you spend less time engaging in introspection. Because you don’t need to look deep into yourself and think about, what do I really want? And what am I suited for in life?
Because you have this kind of uncritical approach to your vision for your life and you’re less adaptable. And so it’s not required of you to sit back and reflect. And so yeah, I mean, he’s a character who’s a kind of pretty devoid of reflection until the end of the film, where I think he does have this reckoning. And I wanted to explore what the negative consequences are of that, mostly for the people around him, but also for himself.
KS: Are you worried that audiences might see him as a monster, opposed to just misguided?
RH: Totally. And I think that already with people who’ve seen the film, there has been a breadth of responses to him. I mean, even some of my female friends have been like, “Oh, that guy’s so my type.” And I’m like, “Oh my God, poor you. That’s so awful.” But then other people see him from the off as this really reprehensible character who’s so beyond the pale.
But I think that’s true to how we approach people in life. I think there are people who will think of it as malevolent and really totally reprehensible. But others will manage to have a relationship with because we read people in different ways. And so I didn’t want to create a character that was so clear-cut evil or malevolent. I think that he’s someone who actually has good intentions but is just very selfish. And so that’s what I wanted to communicate.
And I wanted to try and ask the audience to understand or even to empathize with him a little bit despite his horrible actions. But it’s a fine dance to try and make work in a film because you don’t want to condone the actions while you’re still asking the audience to empathize with him. And so it’s a tough thing to get right. I hope I’ve got it right. I feel like I’ve got it right. People are responding well to the film. They’re responding in the way that I intended. But people will have diverse responses to it. And I think that’s the exciting thing about any art that people have myriad reactions and it’ll create dialogue, I hope.
KS: Final question, what happens to Dennis after the credits? It doesn’t have to be official, but imagining what happens, where does he go from here?
RH: Well, my hope is that for the characters that he realizes that at least at this point in his life, he’s not capable of being a father. And he realizes that it’s what keeps leading him to the same situation of being alone and losing the people he becomes close to: his inability to recognize and assimilate their desires into his life vision.
It’s his selfishness causing the people around him significant harm. But also causing himself harm because he keeps losing anything that he loves. And so I hope that he’d become a better person. Do people change that easily after a weekend with someone? I don’t know. I think people do change, or they change slowly and over time. But I would like to think that he became a better person. And then because of that, was rewarded with a life that was suitable to him. And he found love and treated that person well.
That’s so sweet and earnest, which is kind of unlike me. But yeah, that’s true. That’s what I want for him. I want him to stop causing harm.
Sunday’s Children recently premiered at the 2026 Cannes International Film Festival.
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