Sleep
Marlene, a woman plagued by horrific dreams, suffers a nervous breakdown in a remote village. As her 19-year-old daughter Mona follows, she comes upon a well-kept family secret and an old curse that ultimately threatens her life - a never-ending nightmare…
The idyllic village of Stainbach is being haunted by a mysterious demon. It turns out that the nightmares of Marlene (Sandra Hüller) are responsible for the dark events. She is driving some of the inhabitants of the village insane during her terrible dreams. When she discovers her nightmares are about a real place, she tracks down the village of Stainbach to get to the bottom of the mystery. There, she learns about the consequence of her dreams and suffers a nervous breakdown. Soon after, she is admitted to a psychiatric ward. Her daughter, Mona (Gro Swantje Kohlhof), journeys to Stainbach to find out the reason for her mother’s breakdown and the demonic nightmares she suffered from. She comes into contact with the peculiar villagers and discovers the dark history hidden within the quiet village. Perhaps the nightmare isn’t the demon that threatens the town after all, but rather - the past.
The psychological thriller SLEEP tells the gripping story of three generations of women fatefully bound together and a village community haunted by a never-ending nightmare. Sandra Hüller, widely known for her stunning performance in the Oscar-nominated “Toni Erdmann”, and Gro Swantje Kohlhof, one of the leads in the zombie horror “Ever After”, star as a mother-daughter duo in Michael Venus' sinister feature debut. The film was produced by Verena Gräfe-Höft of JUNAFILM, as a co-production with ZDF-Das kleine Fernsehspiel, based on a screenplay written by the director, Michael Venus together with Thomas Friedrich.
Awards
ToHorror Fantastic Film Festival Torino 2020 (Italy): Special Mention
Anomaly Film Festival Rochester 2020 (USA): Audience Award dor Best Feature
Key Information
| Original Title | Schlaf |
| Genre |
Thriller |
| Produced by: | Verena Gräfe-Höft |
| Year Of Production | 2020 |
| Duration | 101 min |
| Country Of Origin | Germany |
| Language Versions | German [OV],English [ST] |
Cast & Crew
| Director/s | Michael Venus |
| Cast | Gro Swantje Kohlhof Sandra Hüller August Schmölzer Marion Kracht Max Hubacher Agata Buzek Martina Schöne-Radunski Katharina Behrens |
| Producer/s | Verena Gräfe-Höft |
| Writer/s | Thomas Friedrich |