Count sheep to sleep. It is one of the (impractical) remedies that has been passed down from generation to generation and has become an iconic (mental) image in popular culture. But what if those sheep were real and took over us and our thoughts in that waking state inhabited by monsters?
It’s a starting point that’s as whimsical as it is creative. José Corral’s feature film debut Based on the animation, it creates a very special universe to tell the story of a young man between nightmare and reality who cannot sleep and eventually falls into a spiral of violence and madness.
Ernesto (Eneko Sagardoy), the protagonist of this very dark tale lives in a dilapidated building and cannot sleep because one of the few neighbors is having a party at his house. She takes care of the community, and in her spare time she makes models for one of us, like how we imagine sheep jumping over a fence fall asleep. Loneliness and isolation are part of his being, trapped in that collapsing void. imitated so much. On one of those endless nights, the animals in your models will come to life and make you do unbelievable things. Note: The sheep are not animated, there is no special effect on them, they are made of papier-mâché.
kamikaze
“It is not unusual to receive such a risky, rare and different project in our country. As I read it, doubts flooded me, how could this universe be realized halfway between mental state and reality? But I’m pretty kamikaze and jumped right in. Eneko Sagardoy, “When was I going to make a movie where papier-mâché sheep could talk?” says.
‘Counting sheep’ It’s a very miserable movie full of isolated characters and steeped in their own misery. He talks about the mental health it all creates, but builds a very special world that reeks of Maurice Sendak’s characters in Michel Gondry’s ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ and ‘The Science of Sleep’. The entire movie takes place in a filthy building, due to the type of clothes that ‘modern’ people going to the after-party wear, perhaps we don’t know exactly when the eighties took place, but precisely this temporary displacement creates an even more terrifying hallucinatory feeling.
“I like movies where the lines between madness and reason, fiction and reality are blurred. and they are unconstrained, it helped me a lot in building my character,” continues Sagardoy. “There’s also the world of that ladder, which is at risk of social exclusion, of enormous economic insecurity, of neighbors who have problems and don’t even know how to ask for help. Loneliness is so severe that they have no means to tell whether they are sane or insane.
environmental toxicity
Among the creatures that surround that building is Paola. Natalie de Molina. It’s a minor role for an actress with drug addiction issues, but her presence is crucial to the plot. “I always like to bet on new directors because they are risky and offer new things. My character was integrated into a male world and part of that environment’s toxicity. according to me The film shows how the rejection of the different is produced and how society produces monsters.”.
It is difficult to describe a work as unique as it is. ‘Counting sheep’ is a film noir, a spooky thriller involving a psychopath, a paranoia, an unhealthy comedy… As Natalia de Molina stated, it is not an easy journey, it is dirty, miserable and even frightening, and for this very reason, it suddenly becomes one of the ‘rare avises’ whose existence we celebrate in our cinema.