Comedian Nina Conti makes her directorial debut with this darkly funny joy ride featuring a monkey, a radio host brought back from the brink and a dead man’s watch.

Ready to end his life in a dingy motel room, radio presenter Roy is serendipitously interrupted by Jane, who is on a mission to escape the stronghold of her abusive stepfather, the motel’s owner. When Roy wakes to find himself speeding down a highway in his van, driven by Jane – dressed in the garb of her confident alter ego, Monkey, which she refuses to take off – he finds himself going along for the ride. Buoyed by Monkey’s bold vision to start a new life, the pair hatch a plan to dig up his father’s dead body. An unlikely partnership forms: Monkey finds a path to freedom and Roy discovers a lifeline.

At once bleakly funny, tender and profound, Sunlight is the first narrative feature from award-winning, critically acclaimed comedian and ventriloquist Conti. Comedian Shenoah Allen co-wrote the film with real-life partner Conti, and their on-screen chemistry as Roy and Jane is affectingly palpable. With its upbeat soundtrack and the sprawling desert landscape of New Mexico, Sunlight is an offbeat road movie that doubles as an unconventional love story – one that’s sure to provoke belly laughs, melancholy and a heartwarming afterglow.