Erin Vassilopoulos is bringing If Only Tonight We Could Sleep to the TIFF Market with a reported $3.3 million budget and financing still to assemble. The feature is one of the international projects seeking investors and sales partners through Toronto's project market.
This marks the film's first market appearance. Julia Jendrysik and Brad Zimmerman are among the producers, with Poland's Rizz Films and Greece's Heretic attached to the multi-territory co-production.
Margaret just wants to sleep
The story begins in 1962 with Margaret, a woman who has endured insomnia for years. She learns about a mysterious mountain sanatorium in Sweden offering an unconventional treatment and eventually travels there in search of relief.
The cure is only part of what she finds.
Margaret becomes drawn to a former nurse who awakens desires she has long repressed. Vassilopoulos describes the project as a Gothic body-horror story about insomnia, allowing the medical premise and Margaret's emotional awakening to occupy the same increasingly uneasy space.
A surreal mid-century hotel is part of the attraction
The filmmaker has singled out the setting as a major element of the project: a surreal mountain hotel built around mid-century architecture. Isolation, medical treatment and rigid interiors give the story a strong visual framework before any bodily transformation enters the picture.
Vassilopoulos also intends to connect that environment directly to the film's LGBTQ+ themes. In 1962, Margaret is entering an institution to have one part of herself treated while another has spent years being hidden.
The screenplay is co-written by Vassilopoulos and Ariane Hahusseau, whose development materials also position the film across horror, mystery and romance.
Vassilopoulos is staying in genre-bending territory
The Greek-American filmmaker made their feature debut with Superior, which premiered in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at Sundance in 2021. Their follow-up, Destroy All Girls, premiered in Locarno's Cineasti del Presente competition in August 2026.
That trajectory makes If Only Tonight We Could Sleep feel less like a sharp genre pivot than a continuation of Vassilopoulos's interest in stories that refuse clean categories. Another feature currently in development, A Mall and the Night, is described as a psychosexual thriller unfolding inside a dying shopping mall.
The sanatorium still needs financing
At TIFF, the producers are primarily seeking equity financing and international sales. The project is being assembled across the United States, Poland, Denmark, Greece and Sweden.
Development information has pointed toward an early 2027 shoot in Poland, although production has not yet been presented as fully financed. No lead cast has been publicly announced and there is no release date.
For now, If Only Tonight We Could Sleep remains exactly the kind of alternative genre project a financing market exists to push forward: specific location, modest scale, strange premise, and a sleep clinic that already sounds like somewhere nobody should willingly spend the night.
