When I was little, I used to spend the holidays at my grandmother’s house. It was a big, old house that filled with noises at night. Every night my grandmother came to my room and sang lullabies to help me sleep. I wanted to fall asleep quickly so that she wouldn’t have to stay there waiting in the cold... But every night it took me ages to fall asleep, because I knew that once I did my grandmother would go and I would be left all alone in my dark bedroom. For me, the house was divided into two worlds: my room was the land of death, whereas my grandmother’s room was filled with life.
I made Sleep Tight because I wanted to film fear, that feeling that eats away at body and soul. A feeling that is so hard to define as adults, but much easier to pin down in childhood: it might be next door’s dog, or a shadow on the wall; it may even have clear boundaries, like the two worlds in my grandmother’s house. In my room all the noises of the house were terrible omens, while in my grandmother’s room her loud snoring was the comforting sound of life.
You can’t talk about fear without talking about death. At the heart of every fear is the fear of death.
I have been told, by someone who spoke from experience, that the reason old people don’t sleep is so they can see death when it comes. I believe that, I believe we somehow think that if we don’t give in to sleep, if we don’t allow it to make us vulnerable, we can trick death, delay it. I believe that the sleepless nights of old age are vigils rather like those of childhood, both of them dictated by fear, both of them acts of resistance and a struggle against death.