Ca' Foscari Short Film Festival

Ostensibly Tomorrow At Dawn is an examination of a community still in the thralls of superstition, believing that the work of a witch doctor will be able to cure all ills.

Aside from a scant few lines, Hayward eschews dialogue relying on the visuals to let us know about the family dynamics.

The film is interesting in terms of different techniques and expression forms coming together, but it doesn’t take enough of emotional distance from its main character.

The directorial duo André Rodrigues & João Pais da Silva do what they can with the script written by Tiago Laranjo that borrows from many genre tropes without having developed them to the maximum, and with a very slim budget

Plundering as an act of everything that church officially stands against, but that it had employed for centuries to accumulate its own wealth, turns into a metaphor of sorts.

Guileful on many levels, the script leaves us with a plenitude of questions not turning annoying by not providing definite answers.

Despite its over-reaching ambition, While You’re Sleeping does remain an often intriguing metaphor for human relationships.