Gustavo Hernandez, who broke out to international recognition and sales with his debut, the Elle Driver-sold 2011 Cannes hit La casa muda, pictured, is lining up psychological paranormal thriller Persomnia as his third directorial outing, reports Variety.
Set up at Montevideo’s Mother Superior Films, Persomnia could also mark Hernandez’s English-language debut.
Written by Juma Fodde Roma (Splendorous Garden of the Heart), Persomnia is said to continue Hernandez’s hallmark claustrophobia: “A young actress joins a radical theater troupe, replacing a member who has disappeared, which is experimenting with days without sleep in order to perform all the better a play first created and put on in the now abandoned psychiatric ward 30 years ago and whose original performers, all inmates, died in a terrible fire, the play’s climax. As the days pass, the actors reach new levels of sensitivity, opening up to the spirits in the hospital in order to achieve unique performances, as these spirits drive the play towards the same terrible ending.”
It’s said to pack an important twist in its narrative.
“There have been experiments on insomnia, what happens to people after four, five, six days without sleep. It’s as if their sensibility, perceptions open up to another world,” said Hernandez to the site, adding that Persomnia “is a horror film” which “also talks about madness in art and just how far artists will go to create something which transcends.”
“This is a beautiful path to follow to work on fear, on the line dividing the real from unreal, or from death.”
Shot as one continuous take and the subject of a U.S. remake starring Elizabeth Olsen and directed by Open Water’s Chris Kentis and Lara Lau, La casa muda was shot in an isolated countryside house. Local God, Hernandez’s second film, seen at September’s Austin Fantastic Festival, unspools in a cave where a demonic force unleashes a rockband members’ worst nightmares.