The movie Sleep With Your Eyes Open by Nele Wohlatz made its first appearance at the Berlin Film Festival in the Encounters category, and now it’s being shared with the world by Radiance, who owns the rights to show it everywhere.
Sleep With Your Eyes – Official Trailer
This movie is Nele Wohlatz’s first step into making fiction movies, following her successful El Futuro Perfecto, which won an award at the Locarno Film Festival in 2016 and was shown at over 70 film festivals around the globe.
“Sleep With Your Eyes Open” tells a story with a light-hearted touch about misunderstandings and is set in a seaside town in Brazil. The story follows Kai, who comes from Taiwan with a heavy heart from a recent breakup. Kai meets Fu Ang, who might become a new friend, but suddenly vanishes.
While searching for Fu Ang, Kai learns about Xiaoxin and a group of Chinese workers living in a tall building. Kai feels a connection to Xiaoxin’s story, finding similarities to her own situation. Throughout a warm, lingering summer, Kai forms subtle connections with those around her.
Wohlatz shared her feelings of feeling lost between cultures, having been born in Germany and lived in Argentina. She wanted to create a movie that could be set in any city worldwide, focusing on characters who feel they don’t fully belong anywhere.
The movie also explores themes of feeling unsafe or threatened, hinted at by its title and references to sharks in the sea. These feelings stem from fears of violence, crime, being forced to leave a country, and poverty.
The main production team for the film includes Cinemascópio, a Brazilian company owned by Kléber Mendoça Filho and Émilie Lesclaux, along with Violeta Bava and Rosa Martínez Rivero at Ruda Cine in Argentina, Roger Huang and Justine O. at Yi Tiao Long Hu Bao in Taiwan, and Meike Martens and Wohlatz at Blinker Filmproduktion. Source
