Asleep

The city at night. Headlights illuminate the tall buildings and their gigantic billboards, transforming them into the only living beings in the otherwise empty streets. Shot at an oblique angle, flashing lights strike these images of the living dead, with their pale faces and huge, wide-open eyes. The otherworldly electronic soundscape that percolates through this unconventional, wordless portrait of a city alternates with ambient sounds of crunching gravel and a single lonely moped. This is also a city of flowing water and barbed wire, the place where strangers can meet. Director Clarissa Campolina lives and works in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and it is here that she filmed Asleep. She makes a detailed study of the everyday at randomly selected locations in Belo Horizonte - and gets to know another city in the process. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)