SUNCOAST: A Review
by Karen Pecota

Laura Chinn | USA | 2024

A semi-autobiographical story from writer-director Laura Chinn is her choice to showcase as her film debut in SUNCOAST. Chinn was a pre-teen when her brother, Max was diagnosed with brain cancer. In 2005, during Chinn’s teenage years, Max was moved to Suncoast, a hospice facility in St Petersburg, Florida, after several years of being under the care of Chinn and her family.

At the time, the facility was the final home of 41-year-old Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman who had been in a vegetative state for more than fifteen years. She died in March 2005 during Max’s stay. Terri’s family controversy over her well-being ended up in a cultural and legislative debate over end-of-life issues. The atmosphere surrounding the facility drew a lot of attention, “from the press to the Pope,” Chinn recalls. As a prolific writer, Chinn uses her memoir, Acne, to shareabout caring for a very sick brother, while trying to take care of her own personal drama from adolescent to teenage life, vacillating between insecurity and maturity without much parental guidance.

Chinn’s character development in her young heroine, Doris (Nico Parker), gives an unforgettable performance. Doris’s youth gets complicated when forced to be a responsible adult, receiving little positive feedback for her efforts. Chinn shares, “There were so many times during those six years where I felt forgotten about, or guilty, or like I wasn’t doing it right—grieving right, or taking care of Max right.” Parker did a remarkable job to represent all of those aspects and more in her performance of Chinn’s coming-of-age teenage narrative.

Always living under the shadow of her brother, Max’s (Cree Kawa) illness, Doris has no time to invest in herself, thus completely unaware of her beautiful qualities, both inside and out. Nor has she been given the necessary attention a young girl desires from her mother, Kristine (Laura Linny), who is overburdened with what Max supposedly needs.

Things change when Max is moved to the hospice facility to live out his dying days, and Doris meets Paul Warren (Woody Harrelson), an activist, who hangs out at the Suncoast Hospice Facility, during the right-to-die court case of Terry Shiavo. An uncanny relationship develops between the two, with a shared empathy, and welcomed mentoring that becomes a gift which both will forever cherish.