SLEEP FURIOUSLY

A Love Letter to Welsh Rural Life

A highlight of recent British Art Cinema – Gideon Koppel’s debut documentary SLEEP FURIOUSLY will be shown at this year’s festival! Moreover, SLEEP FURIOUSLY’S producer Margaret Matheson will be present at britspotting 2009.

In his first documentary, Koppel tells the real-life story of the disappearing farming community in the Welsh Midlands. In Trefeurig, where Gideon Koppel’s parents took refuge during the Second World War and where he himself grew up, landscape and population are undergoing quick change due to urbanisation and industrialisation. Slowly but surely, the idyllic life of the local community is dying.

Koppel spent a year observing life of the community in Trefeurig and his results are certainly very impressive. SLEEP FURIOUSLY paints a magical portrait of the Welsh hamlet and is more a fictional journey into the world of Koppel’s childhood than an ethnographic documentary about Wales. Fields are ploughed, cows are milked, a choir practises, people natter in Welsh and English, a calf is born – in beautiful, detailed shots, the film captures people’s life in a rural community and the significance of nature for them. Without doubt, SLEEP FURIOUSLY constitutes a piece of Welsh cultural heritage.

Koppel’s unique debut feature premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2008 and was extraordinarily well received by the audience, filmmakers and critics. Supported by a beautiful soundtrack by the Aphex Twin, we hope the German audience will enjoy SLEEP FURIOUSLY just as well!

SLEEP FURIOUSLY: November, 15 – 6:00 pm – Babylon

britspotting rewind: November, 18 – 9:30 pm – Babylon