A Boy & His Dog: Galoe Sweeps Through Slums in Restrained Debut
Home is where the heart is, but such a sentiment becomes difficult to differentiate for the adolescent protagonist of Ciudad Sin Sueño (Sleepless Night), the directorial debut of Spanish filmmaker Guillermo Galoe. A coming-of-age tale familiar in scope, its locale might be the most unique offering, set in Europe’s largest illegal slum on the outskirts of Madrid. Cinematographer Rui Poças (Good Manners; Frankie) brings his expert skill to the visual textures of the mise en scene, capturing a formidable juxtaposition of squalor tinged freedom of living on the fringes.
Toni (Antonio Fernandez Gabarre) idolizes his grandfather, the family patriarch who lords over his clan in a sprawling slum. However, the family, as well as all the other slum residents, have been served eviction notices as the government has plans to dismantle and demolish the expansive illegal encampment. While his grandfather refuses, claiming this is their rightful home, Toni’s parents take a lucrative offer to move into a rent controlled apartment where he and his four siblings can all have their own bedrooms. Toni is conflicted about whether or not he should follow his parents or stay behind with grandpa.
Galoe utilizes a visual technique with Toni’s iPhone filters to showcase a magical sense of wonder and discovery, changing the color palette as a way to reinvent the world around him. However, this sense of contemporary innovation as an extension of Toni’s interiority ends here. Sleepless Night resembles a variety of contemporary neo-realist cinematic offerings, such as films by Jonas Carpignano and Carla Simon’s “Alcarras,” (2022). But Galoe really seems to be channeling something like Danis Tanovic’s “An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker,” (2013) and Ettore Scola’s “Ugly, Dirty & Bad,” (1976), which also details multiple generations of a family living in a shantytown outside of Rome. Likewise, Toni’s aimlessness and familial occupation plays like the tame version of Pasolini’s novel “Boys Alive,” (1955).
While Galoe avoids sentimentality, the least interesting aspect of the narrative is Tonino, who spends a majority of the running time trying to reclaim the greyhound from the woman his grandfather sold her to. Running her own black market pet business, the film’s most extravagant sequence arrives when Toni inadvertently releases all the dealer’s exotic birds while trying to kidnap his neglected dog.
Toni’s struggle between choosing to live in rent controlled government housing versus maintaining his grandfather’s perspective of their current home is never really fashioned as an actual dramatic catalyst. “Isn’t this happiness?,” his grandfather questions him, and yet, Toni’s prized possession is forcibly taken from him, while a bleak landscape of rampant drug abuse, electrical blackouts, and random refuse fires represent a continual nightlife which feels dystopic. But we never get to experience Toni’s epiphany that this is abnormal. Understated and featuring likable lead performances from its nonprofessional cast, Sleepless City feels too familiar to feel restless about.
Reviewed on May 19th at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival (78th edition) – Critics’ Week. 97 Mins.
★★½/☆☆☆☆☆