{"id":2091788,"date":"2026-08-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2091788"},"modified":"2026-08-13T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T21:00:00","slug":"wonderland-338","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2091788","title":{"rendered":"Wonderland"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\tWonderland<\/span>
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\n\t\t\tESTE HAIM\u2019S SCREEN EVOLUTION<\/span>
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The creativity of Este Haim, one-third of sister-trio Haim, finds new form as the screen composer behind Sunny Dancer<\/em>, George Jaques\u2019 bittersweet, critically cherished indie film. Sonically chronicling the experience of kids impacted by cancer at a summer camp, she shows how dark humour can\u2019t exist without a dash of light.<\/h3>\n
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\"Este
Photography by Hedi\u00a0Stanton<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Este Haim appears on screen mid\u2011press blitz, half laughing at her own schedule. She\u2019s in New York, the weather has finally shifted from a brief grey stint to sharp, bright sun, and her to\u2011do list reads like a Pinterest board for the terminally overachieving: grab a coffee, go for a walk, journal a while, then chip away at the TV show she\u2019s currently scoring \u2013 Netflix\u2019s newly-released Voicemails For Isabelle<\/em> featuring Zoey Deutch and Nick Robinson \u2013 before diving back into a day of interviews. It sounds exhausting yet she insists it isn\u2019t. \u201cI\u2019m booked and busy,\u201d she grins. \u201cIt\u2019s what I definitely want for me. I feel best when I\u2019m busy, when I\u2019m working. It\u2019s partly a sickness, but I don\u2019t care. Give it to me. I don\u2019t need the cure.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a slow, minor wink in the eldest Haim sister\u2019s perspective \u2013 a charming woman, full of life, joking ironically about not needing a cure for her workaholism despite navigating a life spent mostly with a chronic illness \u2013 but it\u2019s also the lens through which Sunny Dancer<\/em> starts to make sense.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Young actor-turned-filmmaker, 25-year-old George Jaques<\/a>\u2019 independent film is set at a camp for children living with or recovering from cancer, a premise that sounds, at first pass, like a one\u2011way ticket to cinematic melancholy. In reality, the film is messy and strangely joyful, full of crushes, pranks, petty jealousies and droning days that are only intermittently interrupted by the cloud of illness. And Este\u2019s musical touch lives warmly in that gap.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you just say that sentence \u2013 \u2018It\u2019s a movie about a cancer camp\u2019 \u2013 you\u2019re like, \u2018Oh my God, it\u2019s going to be so fucking depressing and sad,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cBut George has this magical way of also giving it levity, moments of comedy and spurts of joy, and that combination really made for this inspiring piece of film that made scoring it that much easier.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Este<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Her way into the project wasn\u2019t a brief or a budget; it was simply a coffee date. Jaques reached out early, when the film was transpiring rather than in action, and suggested they meet. Coffee brewed into lunch, settled into drinks, and by the end of it Este had essentially collected more of a new friend than a collaborative colleague.<\/p>\n

George was \u201cthe number one reason\u201d that she wanted to work on the film in the first place.. \u201cI think that he\u2019s so fucking smart and has such a vision and such a great taste level. We just wanted to keep hanging out with each other. I love making new friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Only after they\u2019d cemented their friendship did Jaques start talking in detail about the film: a camp for young people with cancer, or freshly out of treatment; a tight, contained world where kids are monitored and medicated but also get to experience falling in love and screwing around. Trying desperately to feel normal. How neatly this would reflect Este\u2019s own history felt too good to be true.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe started talking about the movie, and I told him it\u2019s crazy you\u2019re mentioning this because I went to a camp for diabetics when I was in high school.\u201d Diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes aged 14 and, like a lot of kids thrust into chronic illness, she felt profoundly isolated. \u201cI was the only diabetic at my school,\u201d she remembers. \u201cMy family tried to empathise with me, but it\u2019s really difficult to understand what it\u2019s like to live with chronic illness unless you have one.\u201d So, as a remedy that didn\u2019t involve hospitals and appointments, her doctor suggested a diabetes camp, somewhere where she wasn\u2019t alone in her struggle. A place where other young people also had to navigate carb\u2011counting, checking blood sugar levels, and, inevitably, finding a solid support unit away from the hospital hallways.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be in a camp, essentially trauma bonding over living with Type 1 diabetes \u2013 that kind of saved me,\u201d she says. From the ages of 15 to 17, she returned to the camp for the summer. Similarly to the young teens running rampant in Sunny Dancer<\/em>, headed by 17-year-old Ivy (played by Bella Ramsey), the memories are lurid and hormonal and weirdly cinematic; ebbing between sunburnt and wired; counsellors (played by Neil Patrick Harris and Shalom Brune-Franklin) hovering just out of frame; medical equipment part of the furniture.<\/p>\n

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\"Este<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cHormones are raging,\u201d the Grammy-nominated musician laughs. \u201cI had crushes on every single boy at my camp. That feeling of pining for someone, the jealousy when you see them flirting with someone else, this feeling of, like, even the boys that I have everything in common with don\u2019t even like me.\u201d<\/p>\n

On paper, diabetes camp and cancer camp are not the same thing. But in practice, the emotional beats are close enough that Este didn\u2019t have to stretch. The characters in Sunny Dancer<\/em> are teenagers first and patients second; that\u2019s the real beauty of this film \u2013 their illnesses mould them rather than become them. As do their summer romances, their friendships, their measly betrayals. And it\u2019s something the eldest Haim sister revelled in alongside the six teenagers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think those were the memories I kept going back to,\u201d she says with a subtle smile. \u201cJust this feeling of young love and wanting\u2026wanting to find someone that you feel like really understands where you\u2019re coming from, and feeling understood. There\u2019s nothing like that when you connect with someone.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Jaques\u2019 script providing a sensitive and deeply personal roadmap, it was inevitably Este\u2019s own history and experiences that provided the extra colour grading. On the surface, Sunny Dancer<\/em> is full of moments that could so easily be minimised to melodrama \u2013 a late\u2011night confession, a body failing at the worst possible time, the abrupt reminder that some kids aren\u2019t going to make it to adulthood. Real heart pangs. Nevertheless, Este refuses to score them as mere tragedies. She\u2019s lived firsthand the weird mundanity of being ill while still, rightfully, wanting to be chaotic and silly and hot.<\/p>\n

\"Este<\/figure>\n

\u201cWhen you have a chronic illness, especially when you\u2019re that young, it really does something to you. You become hypervigilant,\u201d she shares. \u201cI look back on it now, and I\u2019m like, 14\u2011year\u2011old Este was really fucking strong\u2026or she had to be.\u201d The same, she says, is true for the kids at the core of Sunny Dancer<\/em>. The score had to honour that without embalming it. Some cues lean into the melancholy, but they\u2019re threaded with a kind of sideways joy, the knowledge that even in the worst circumstances kids will still find a way to sneak out, to make a joke, to fall in love with the wrong person.<\/p>\n

Whenever you\u2019re exploring topics that are quite melancholic, and then actually, you feel quite joyous on the other side of it, it\u2019s an interesting mix to navigate. Sunny Dancer<\/em> lives exactly in that tension \u2013 and so does the music she\u2019s chosen for it.<\/p>\n

Beyond the original score, Este also serves as the film\u2019s unofficial music supervisor, wiring Sunny Dancer<\/em> into a larger universe of songs. The needle drops feel like they could have been pulled off old iPod playlists \u2013 the kind of tracks you put on repeat on the bus home from camp, volume up, eyes out of the window, main\u2011character syndrome fully activated.<\/p>\n

For Este, that process is half instinct, half research, underpinned by a brain that hoards melodies the way other people hoard receipts \u2013 or rather captures the perfect snapshot. \u201cI have a kind of photographic memory when it comes to songs. I can hear a song once, and I\u2019ll almost usually know around 80% of the lyrics. I\u2019ll definitely know all the melodies. The memories of those songs don\u2019t go away,\u201d she explains of her hidden superpower. \u201cMy RAM card is full\u2026even when I think it\u2019s full, somehow I still find room. I do have this knack for being able to pull songs out of the universe that I\u2019ve heard once.\u201d<\/p>\n

Through research, the making of \u201cmultiple Spotify playlists\u201d, and interrogating other artist friends, she would reach musical metamorphosis. And naturally, friends became co\u2011curators: her friend, producer and composer Zachary Dawes, pushed for Irish singer-songwriter CMAT \u2013 Este had seen her Glastonbury set and been \u201cblown away, blown away, blown away\u201d \u2013 and suddenly \u201cCan\u2019t Hack It Without You\u201d was woven into the film\u2019s fabric.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"Este<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Elsewhere, teenage Este resurfaces via \u201cHysteric\u201d \u00e0 la the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The film itself begins with Olivia Dean\u2019s \u201cThe Hardest Part\u201d, a twang of hope amidst the suggested impending doom. Then, in trickles, \u201cDreams\u201d by The Cranberries, party hits like Tency Music\u2019s \u201cCha Cha Slide\u201d and \u201cI Don\u2019t Feel Like Dancin\u2019\u201d by the Scissor Sisters, as well as a live performance of \u201cYou\u2019re Beautiful\u201d by none other than James Blunt at the end-of-camp talent show. It\u2019s an irresistible sonic expression of an experience that cannot be made linear. In the scattering, the disorientation and the mayhem, you can still be a Sunny Dancer<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That said, nothing is theoretical; every choice is tried on against the image. \u201cA lot of it just has to do with experimentation,\u201d she says. \u201cYou put a song in a scene, you throw it up on the screen, and you almost know immediately if it\u2019s working or not.\u201d The result is a film that sounds like the kids at its centre: bruised but not broken, dramatic in that distinctly infectious juvenile way, convinced that every look, every lyric, every stolen moment means everything.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Este\u2019s own life hums alongside it \u2013 the girl at diabetes camp, the only diabetic at school, the adult composer \u201cbooked and busy\u201d in New York, in love with London, married to a Brit, still playing cool to the fact that this<\/em> is her job. \u201cI love it so much,\u201d she says, almost off\u2011hand. \u201cTo write music for a living? It\u2019s the best job in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Sunny Dancer<\/em>, however, that job isn\u2019t just to add more shadowing to the outlines. It\u2019s filling the negative space with colour: the flirting, the jealousy, the boredom, the stupid decisions, the tiny pockets of freedom at the edge of something terrifying. Este scores the camp she once knew and needed, for a generation of kids who might see themselves in its chaos. The film is about cancer, yes. But more than that, it\u2019s about the brief, blazing summers where you realise the worst thing that\u2019s happened to you doesn\u2019t get to be the only story.<\/p>\n

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Sunny Dancer is in cinemas across the UK from tomorrow, Friday 14th August.
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Words<\/strong> \u2013 Aswan Magumbe<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t13 August 2026\t\t\t<\/div>\n
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Culture<\/a><\/div>\n
Film & TV<\/a><\/div>\n
Music<\/a><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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\n\t\t\t\tRose Gray\u2019s Love Letter to Rio<\/span> <\/span><\/a>\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wonderland ESTE HAIM\u2019S SCREEN EVOLUTION The creativity of Este Haim, one-third of sister-trio Haim, finds new form as the screen composer behind Sunny Dancer, George Jaques\u2019 bittersweet, critically cherished indie film. Sonically chronicling the experience of kids impacted by cancer at a summer camp, she shows how dark humour can\u2019t exist without a dash of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,257],"class_list":["post-2091788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-wonderlandmagazine-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2091788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2091788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2091788\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2091788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2091788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2091788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}