LOS ANGELES—When a then 20-year-old Aliya Brynn received a call from director Michael Ryan about booking her for the mainstream movie he was working on, “I was hyped,” she recalls. “I was very excited.”
That was in 2020. And now, Ryan’s ambitious sci/fi opus, The Dresden Sun, is finally hitting screens—it’s currently playing in select theaters in Northern California and available to rent or buy from a variety of digital platforms. Ryan and his co-producers also plan to take the picture on a theatrical tour over the next six months.
Brynn, the 2020 AVN Awards Trophy Girl and 2024 Trans Erotica Award winner, shares billing in Dresden Sun with such Hollywood luminaries as Christina Ricci (Wednesday, Black Snake Moan), Mena Suvari (American Beauty, American Pie) and Steven Ogg (The Walking Dead, Emancipation). And though her screen time is seemingly brief at first glance, she actually has a much larger presence in the movie than appearances would suggest.
Throughout, there are dozens of fictional commercials and music videos flashing on giant screens in the dystopian cityscape where Dresden Sun is set (paying heavy homage, of course, to Blade Runner), and Brynn can be spotted in a good many of them.
“I worked so many hours on this movie, you have no idea,” she divulges. Aside from shooting her handful of scenes as the arm candy of evil corporate bigwig Jack Wellman (Leigh McCloskey), she “would drive all the way up to Big Bear and we would film these music videos, multiple music videos for the same song, which is the main song of the whole movie.” (The song in question being “Too Much Information” by Fourteen Forty—see the official video below.)
“And then there was this other music video where I was the makeup artist,” she continues. All of which was topped off by the myriad insert clips she shot over the intervening years since principal photography. “So like randomly, there will be flashes in the movie that you can’t even tell it’s me,” she laughs, “but I’m dressed up in fun little outfits in front of a green screen. I did work a lot on this movie.”
Ryan (credited as “MAR” in the movie and promotional materials) tells AVN his original reasoning for casting Brynn was that “she reminded me of a young Kim Cattrall. And she’s got a smart about her ... you can tell there’s some depth there. And that was a big selling point.”
He explains that because the part required nudity, he thought the adult talent pool would be the best place to look. “I didn’t feel comfortable, honestly, for a scene that required someone to be naked ... I felt like someone who already had experience as an adult performer was more appropriate. And I was like, ‘We’ll get somebody that looks great, and we don’t have to worry about somebody feeling uncomfortable. That was the most important thing.”
To that point, during the recent Los Angeles premiere of The Dresden Sun, Brynn proved just how comfortable she was with the whole prospect when she shouted out as her birthday suit was splashed across the screen, “That’s my naked body, y’all!”—garnering a hearty round of cheers from the audience.
“She’s a bit of a firecracker,” Ryan observes. “She’s got charisma. She’s got a lot of moxie. And I thought that kind of attitude worked really well. She had a real natural affinity of just being improvisational when it came to certain expressions, certain additions. She just rolled with it. She had a very creative sensibility about doing something on the fly. She was good at that.”
The director—who also gives props to fellow adult talent Brooke Johnson, who appears in some of the movie’s background clips as well—praises Brynn as “a delight to work with. She did a great job on set. I couldn’t have asked for a better person to play that part, honestly.”
For Brynn’s part, she exudes, “My whole life everyone said I look like Christina Ricci and now I’m in a movie with her. Manifestation is real. You can do anything.”
She adds, “I’m just grateful for the friends I made along the way. I mean, I made a lifelong friend with [Ryan]. That’s more important than anything.”
The Dresden Sun is available on Apple TV and Amazon, among other VOD providers.
Stills courtesy of Michael Ryan
