My Year Of Rest And Relaxation

“Oh, sleep. Nothing else could ever bring me such pleasure, such freedom, the power to feel and move and think and imagine, safe from the miseries of my waking consciousness.”

My Film Of Rest And Relaxation is an experimental short film inspired on the novel ‘My Year Of Rest And Relaxation’ by Ottessa Moshfegh. The book follows a nameless protagonist who tries to escape the chaos of the world and the people around her by letting herself drift off into the quiet abyss that is sleep. By manipulating a psychiatrist with pretending to suffer from insomnia, she gets a hold of a dangerous amount of sleeping pills so she can sleep for as long and deep as possible. Meanwhile, she has to deal with her job as a gallery girl, resisting the urge to reach out for the man she had an affair with, her supposedly ‘best friend’ who talks about nothing but celebrity and love life drama and the crazy side effects of coffee and melatonin. Finally, her goal is to sleep for an entire year to be reborn in the end.