Racheal Cain is the director of Somnium, in which aspiring actor Gemma (Chloë Levine) moves from a small town to Los Angeles, where she takes the overnight shift at a mysterious sleep clinic. In the piece below, Cain, who grew up in Miami, making VHS movies with neighborhood kids, talks about her decade-long quest to get Somnium made. The film plays Sunday night at FilmQuest.
I suppose Somnium has been growing in me my entire life. When I was a kid, my dad made a sensory deprivation chamber out of fiberglass in our garage so he could seal it shut and float into the abyss during his nightly meditations. And as my parents wore out their yard sale copy of The Secret book on tape, I learned the law of attraction. But how could I, a 22-year-old with no industry connections and no money, manifest getting to make my million-dollar first film about, well, manifesting?
