Set against oneiric looking landscapes in Romania, They Sleep Standing is a hybrid documentary-style fictional film, where time seems to be at a standstill. Catherine, Oana and Bogdan, approaching their 30’s, are preoccupied with the future. The languid summer mood set by filmmaker Bogdan Stoica shows his protagonists lingering between fragility and discovery, and not having the answers to many of life’s uncertainties. By keeping the spaces wide open to chance, the encounters are unexpected, and at times frivolous. The outcome is a poetic film, where we are left feeling that sometimes life is best appreciated in some of its more evasive and fleeting moments. (Programming Collective)