The Sleepwalker

Mona Fastvold : 2014

A young couple, Kaia and Andrew, are renovating Kaia's late father's secluded 1920s estate. Their lives are violently disrupted upon the unexpected arrival of Kaia's sister, Christine, and her fiancé, Ira. Prior tensions and jealousies burgeon as new alliances form and childhood patterns resurface. Christine announces her pregnancy, questions Kaia's relationship with Andrew, and objects to the relics of her and Kaia's shared childhood being discarded. As the days grow darker and the nights more disturbing, Kaia is forced to confront Christine's increasingly tangled perception of reality, which in turn may have begun to alter her own. When one of the four characters goes missing, the three left behind are flung into upheaval trying to fill in the blanks. A study in contrasts between Christine's raging brokenness and Kaia's repression, Ira's mild-mannered propriety and Andrew's bitter blue-collar machismo. Mona Fastvold's psychological drama, her feature debut, premiered in competition at Sundance Film Festival 2014, and received its European premiere at Berlin International Film Festival 2014.