Top 100 Most Anticipated American Indie Films of 2018: #90. Meredith Danluck’s State Like Sleep

State Like Sleep

Previously she got her docu game on with 2010’s The Ride (SXSW), but it’s in the narrative shape that we’ve circled Meredith Danluck‘s fiction debut as a highly anticipated genre item. State Like Sleep benefitted from three Sundance Institute workshops in the 2013 Screenwriters, Directors and Sundance Institute Music and Sound Design Labs. Production on this psychological thriller took place in the summer of 2016, so with a couple of other side projects, Danluck has had sufficient time to perfect its form in post prod.

With the top trio of players in Katherine Waterston, a blonde headed Luke Evans and Michael Shannon, under the surreal cloud cover of northern Europe, a young American widow reluctantly revisits her past when her mother is hospitalized in Brussels. While coping with the bleak reality of parental loss, Katherine explores her deceased husband’s secret life of underground sex clubs and finds comfort in a relationship with a stranger (Shannon) as equally broken as she is. There is some major talent behind the camera in Certain Women cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt, composers in often used by Jeff Nichols wingman David Wingo (Loving) and Jeff McIlwain (Snow Angels), this has all the makings of a gripping off the map item.

Release Date/Prediction: With no mentions of Sundance or Berlin, perhaps this shot on location in Toronto item will be unveiled at the scene of the crime with a TIFF showing. SXSW not out of the cards either.