Get the latest gossip

How Locarno Winner Nele Wohlatz Explores Migrants’ Loss of a Sense of Belonging in Berlinale Film ‘Sleep With Your Eyes Open’


Nele Wohlatz's 'Sleep With Your Eyes Open,' which premiered at the Berlinale, looks at the search for a sense of belonging in a foreign country.

German filmmaker Nele Wohlatz ‘s “ Sleep With Your Eyes Open,” which had its world premiere on Saturday in the Encounters section of the Berlin Film Festival, tells a story about the search for a sense of belonging in a foreign country. Here, her life crosses paths with a group of Chinese migrants living in a luxury tower block, and in particular a young woman called Xiaoxin, who accepts her fate, and Fu Ang, who is working in an umbrella store when we meet him but harbors ambitions to become wealthy. “One is starting to use language in order to describe her life, but she also needs the other who reads what she has written, and this invisible friendship or belonging that this act creates between them is how those characters and how we use the film to offer some light.”

Get the Android app

Or read this on Variety

Read more on:

Photo of berlinale film

berlinale film

Photo of nele wohlatz

nele wohlatz

Related news:

News photo

Berlinale Film ‘Every You Every Me,’ About Falling Out of Love With Your Partner, Picked Up by Be For Films (EXCLUSIVE)