News

We’re thrilled to share that WHEN GOD SLEEPS has been shortlisted for a German Academy Award (Deutscher Filmpreis)! You can see the full documentary shortlist here. Huge congratulations and thank you to the entire team, including our partners at WDR, Catapult Film Fund, Fork Films, ITVS, Motto Pictures and Roco Docs!

This just in! WHEN GOD SLEEPS won the Jury Competition Award at the Sound Unseen Film Festival! We’re thrilled to receive this honor, and wish to extend a heartfelt thank you to the folks at SU18 and to everyone who came to see the film in Minneapolis. It was great to share the film with such a passionate community of film and music lovers, so congratulations to Sound Unseen on yet another successful year. Next stop, IDFA in Amsterdam and many more festivals in Europe (and elsewhere) over the next several months. We look forward to bringing the film to even more viewers and hope to see you at one of our future screenings!

WHEN GOD SLEEPS will screen at the 2017 IDFA Film Festival in Amsterdam, The Netherlands! We will have four screenings: November 16, 22, 23 and 24. The screening on November 24 will be followed by a special live musical performance by Shahin Najafi, so you definitely don’t want to miss it! Tickets are available now through our festival page on the IDFA website, link above. IDFA, which stands for International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, “is one of the leading documentary events in the world, offering filmmakers and producers an international platform for creative documentaries”. We hope to see you at one of our screenings!

Minneapolis friends, WHEN GOD SLEEPS is screening at the Sound Unseen Film Festival on November 9th! This is Sound Unseen’s 18th annual “films-on-music” festival, and we’re proud to take part in this unique event that will include, “[d]ocumentaries, rare concert footage, short films, animation, music videos, special performances, gallery exhibitions and dozens of live music events highlighting both local and national acts”. Tickets for our November 9th screening are available through the link above and will also be on sale at the door.

There will be a screening of WHEN GOD SLEEPS at the Denver Film Festival on November 9, with tickets available for purchase through the link above. We’ll be joining a large selection of this year’s most engaging documentary and narrative films, and can’t wait to see some of you in Colorado!

WHEN GOD SLEEPS will take part in The Next Stage Arts Project’s [framed] Documentary Film Series, to take place Thursday, October 26, in Putney, Vermont. From Next Stage’s official website: “[framed] is a presentation by Next Stage Arts Project, in collaboration with Nancy Schafer, former director of the Tribeca Film Festival, of a brand new series of feature length documentary films, each presented by the filmmaker in an intimate setting at Next Stage, 15 Kimball Hill, in Putney, Vermont. [framed] completed its highly successful first series of 6 films in the fall of 2016, and returns by popular acclaim! The current series of films will run on the last Thursday of each month through March 2018.” Tickets for WGS’s 7:30 PM screening on the 26th are now available online. Visit the link above to purchase your discounted advance tickets now, or buy them at…

Next stop, Barcelona! WHEN GOD SLEEPS will screen as an International Official Selection at the 2017 In-Edit Film Festival later this month. In-Edit is an International Music Documentary Film Festival that takes place in Barcelona and is celebrating its 15th year. We’re very pleased to have our Spanish premiere at In-Edit, alongside this season’s exciting crop of international docs, and look forward to sharing our film with those of you in the region! Tickets will go on sale through the In-Edit website starting mid-October, and will also be available at the box office during the festival. Keep checking their website for ticket updates, and visit our festival page for more info about WGS!

We’re very pleased to announce that WHEN GOD SLEEPS will have eight (!) screenings at the 2017 UNHCR Refugee Film Festival in Japan, starting October 6 in Tokyo. Other cities we’re going to are Nagoya, Osaka, Fukuoka, Sapporo, and Hiroshima. “UNHCR, The UN Refugee Agency, is a global organisation dedicated to saving lives, protecting rights and building a better future for refugees, forcibly displaced communities and stateless people.” The UNHCR Refugee Film Festival is now in its twelfth year of bringing powerful refugee stories to the people of Japan, and we couldn’t think of a better place to share Shahin Najafi’s story. For tickets and a full list of screening dates/times, visit our festival page. Pre-order tickets in several cities are already sold out (leaving same-day tickets that can be purchased at the box office on a first come, first serve basis), so hurry!

Till Schauder recently spoke with WDR Radio about WHEN GOD SLEEPS’s upcoming German theatrical run, which will officially begin on October 12. WHEN GOD SLEEPS will kick off its German Kino-Tour at the Cologne Film Festival, starting with a special preview screening on October 1 that will be followed by a Q&A with director Till Schauder, as well as a live concert by Shahin Najafi himself. There will be a second screening on October 2 (though Till and Shahin won’t be at this one), which you can still buy tickets for by going here. We hope to see you at one of these screenings, or on our Kino-Tour!

WHEN GOD SLEEPS will have its Canadian premiere at the Calgary International Film Festival as part of the Music on Screen Series! We’re excited to be sharing the film with our Canadian neighbors and hope that those in the Calgary area can join us for our September 29 or October 1 screenings. Tickets and details are available on our festival page.