sleep furiously is set in a small farming community in mid Wales, about 50 miles north of Dylan Thomas’ fictional village of Llareggub – and there is a sense in which this is a film ‘for’ Dylan Thomas, if not a contemporary translation of ‘Under Milk Wood’. This is a place where Koppel’s parents – both refugees – found a home. It is a landscape and population that is changing rapidly as small scale agriculture is disappearing and the generation who inhabited a pre-mechanised world is dying out. Much influenced by his conversations with the writer Peter Handke, the film maker leads us on a poetic and profound journey into a world of endings and beginnings; a world of stuffed owls, sheep and fire. Allied to a soundtrack by the revered electronic musician Aphex Twin sleep furiously is lyrical film making at its best.

“The film is visually remarkable… what could be bleak in another film is infinitely beautiful here… and what might otherwise seem hopeless is redeemed and made marvellous… .”

Alex Cox
‘Film Comment’

“This film is pure cinema: visually alert, brilliantly musical, and moving in the way it captures time passing and lives lost.”

Mark Cousins
Author of ‘Imagining Reality’ and ‘The Story of Film’