Global Screen is to handle international sales on Michael Venus’ feature debut Sleep (Schlaf), a psychological drama starring Sandra Hüller and Gro Swantje Kohlhof.
The film, co-written with Thomas Friedrich, has a cast led by Hüller, known to international audiences for her starring performance in Oscar-nominated Toni Erdmann, and Kohlhof, a co-lead in Carolina Hellsgård’s zombie horror Ever After (Endzeit).
The duo play a mother and daughter in the drama, which centres on three generations of women fatefully connected and is set in a village community in northern Germany’s Harz mountains haunted by a never-ending nightmare.
Hüller has previously worked with Venus on his short films River (Fluss) and Roentgen, viral film ad campaign Fanpredigt, and fashion film The Tale Of Two Bloody Marys.
The feature debut by the Hamburg Media School graduate was produced by Verena Gräfe-Höft’s Hamburg-based outfit Junafilm, which had the German premiere of another of its productions - Katrin Gebbe’s Pelican Blood (Pelikanblut) - at the Filmfest Hamburg last week following its debut at Venice and Toronto.
Sleep was co-produced with public broadcaster ZDF’s Das kleine Fernsehspiel unit and received backing from Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein, nordmedia, BKM and the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF).
The film is in post-production and will be released by German distributor Salzgeber in 2020.
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