SONDER
Pre-Production
Upon his return to a recently gentrified Chicago, Sean Eberhart finds his memories of home colliding with a stark new reality. Guided by Nicole, a soulful photojournalist, he explores and begins to embrace the changing city, confronting the truth about his past and the place that shaped him—a love letter to Chicago, home, and learning to love again.
Freshly minted alumni of Columbia’s Graduate School of Engineering and Applied Science, Sean Eberhart, returns to his hometown of Chicago, IL after receiving a 1-year rotational job offer at a tech start up there. Upon arriving he is greeted to the uncomfortable and somber city he once remembered until he meets Nicole. She is a soulful, multi-faceted, and mysterious documentary photographer capturing photos outside of the childhood church his cousin Cam is holding him captive at. Nicole convinces Sean to join her on her weekly stroll through the city as she is documenting its changes and seemingly ordinary wonders. Eagerly Sean agrees, anxious to flee the familiarity that only brings haunting memories. Through this sprawling journey through the Southside, Downtown, and then over to the Westside Sean is forced to take a deeper look at the places he thought he knew, finding a renewed perspective- has Chicago changed or maybe he has? Or maybe they both have.
Director's Statement
Sonder has been a labor of love blossoming from a trip home for Booker in the Winter of 2020. He was overwhelmed by memories and the beauty of his hometown when acting as a tour guide for his girlfriend who had never been to Chicago. Through sharing it with someone who had never experienced it he realized it was time for Chicago to get its own love letter that could be experienced through film by the folks who call it home and beyond. Deeply inspired by films like Last Black in San Francisco which explores gentrification in San Francisco and Residue which dives deep into rapidly changing Southwest D.C. Booker began to envision a story exploring the deep but complicated love for the city that was not imbued by violence but held space for the resilience of its survivors. He then called up his friend and writer Sydney Cusic to co-write the film and from that call Sonder was born.
Additionally, increasingly people under 35 are returning home due to the various crises in the world and are forced to reckon with how to reconcile how we once knew an environment with who we have become and a place that has changed in our absence. As a team of people mainly under 35 many of us have first hand accounts and experiences of this societal change.
To sum it up, we are an artistic team that loves Chicago (either through being Chicagoans, having deep familial ties or being patrons to the city) and understands as a 20-somethings in our post-pandemic society that many of us are being forced to return home. We are speaking to an experience that is more common than people realize and bringing a renewed light to a place that is not shown nearly enough love led by Native Chicagoan 20-Somethings.
Sonder is a film that is FUBU (For Us By Us)!
