In a Wake of Sleep
The Unreasonable Silence of the World
Logline
After the suicide of a young man, his partner and sister have conflicting ways to deal with the death, severing their once strong friendship.
Synopsis
Monika, a practical and aspirational woman moves to Rome on a career move to advance herself in the world of Art Galleries, she meets with the only person she knows from Rome, Claudia, a fun-loving existentialist. They become very close, though unfortunately, Monika's time in Rome comes to an end, and she has to return to London. Claudia throws caution to the wind and moves to London with her. When there she is introduced to Monika’s brother Jasper, who bring a new array of colour to her life, he is vivacious and lives impetuously, but struggles with the ability to hold meaningful weight in anything in his life and goes to his extremes to feel anything he can, leading to destructive behaviour. Both Claudia and Monika try to understand him in their own way but are incapable of preventing his suicide. After the death of Jasper their true and raw perspectives on the world drive them apart leaving them both wondering if they ever really knew one another at all.
In a Wake of Sleep is an entirely improvised feature film, shot on location in Italy and England, influenced by the existential ideas of Albert Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus.
Currently in post-production
Directors statement
The film came to me originally in a single image, which did eventually become the opening scene. A woman, having suffered a loss is looking out to sea and witnesses flashing lights. Though this could have been a communication of some sort she did not know what it was saying, this did not matter as it had its own meaning for her. Shortly after this I found Albert Camus’ book The Myth of Sisyphus, in which he talks about humans desperate search for meaning in a world that can only offer purpose. Trying to connect these two things creates an absurdity and those that become aware of this can contemplate the idea of suicide. Taking a philosophical standpoint to this subject was very important to me partly because Camus mentions in the beginning of the book it is too often seen as a social problem and in conversation often becomes too emotional to find answers, it was also something I felt important to explore because before starting this project I had suffered some episodes where it was a reality for me, to the extent that I had made plans so that I knew how to take my own life. This is a place of paradox where you are now carefree and can in fact live well. So, this is something I needed to explore and communicate through my art. The idea that feeling alive happens most vibrantly when death is around the corner, that acknowledging the certainty we are all in fact looking for and ignoring simultaneously is a dangerous freedom.
In the book there is a paragraph: “The irrational, the human nostalgia, and the absurd that is born of their encounter—these are the three characters in the drama that must necessarily end with all the logic of which an existence is capable” this was my runway for the rest of the writing of the story, each element of this existential philosophy was assigned to a character, like a Greek Myth where we have them as representations, the Goddess of the irrational, Goddess of human nostalgia and the birth of the absurd when they meet, which is destined not to live long, as it is born with unstable foundations.