Adrian Țofei and Duru Yücel’s 10-years-in-the-making apocalyptic feature We Put the World to Sleep (spiritual followup to Țofei’s cult horror movie Be My Cat: A Film for Anne) ended 2025 with awards won in the fall at Nightmares Film Festival in Columbus, Ohio (Best Midnight Feature and Best Supporting Performance for Yücel), premieres in top genre festivals (Nightmares, FilmQuest, Nightmare in the Ozarks, Feratum), and eight total award nominations. Adrian and Duru flew from Romania to attend the events and connect with fellow artists and fans in their first festival tour across North America.
The reception from audiences, filmmakers and critics alike exceeded all expectations: “Absolutely LOVED it, I’ve never seen another film like it, so alive, funny, haunting, touching, really something truly special” (acclaimed filmmaker Dallas Hallam), “The F for Fake (Orson Welles’ 1973 film) of found footage” (Rotten Tomatoes top critic Anton Bitel), “One of the most aggressively strange movies I’ve seen in my entire life” (The Movie Blues), “Nothing like any movie I’ve seen before, utterly compelling” (Letterboxd review by Brian Jones), “Loved every second of the second watch, I cried, I am still crying as we speak” (Be My Cat fan), “Not only one of the best found footage flicks ever, it’s one of the best movies of 2025 period. A cult classic in the making” (Sitges alumnus Joe Gietl).
2026 brings a brand new wave of top festival selections, including in one of the most important in Europe and Portugal’s no.1 festival – IndieLisboa (April 30-May 10). The movie will be screened in their highly respected sidebar “Mouth of Madness” which brings together in Lisbon the most anticipated new genre films on the circuit (often coming from major festivals such as Berlin, Sundance, Cannes, TIFF, Venice). Adrian and Duru were thrilled to receive this email from IndieLisboa: “Your film was such a breath of fresh air, truly something unique that we knew we needed to select right away.”. The full lineup is to be announced in the coming month.
February 20th brings the European Premiere at the fast-rising gem Romford Horror Festival in London, UK. March follows with the West Coast Premiere at Unnamed Footage Festival in San Francisco, California (March 27-29, North America’s top festival for POV cinema, mockumentary, screenlife and found footage films), and the Wisconsin Premiere at MidWest WeirdFest and A Night of Horror International Film Festival (March 5-8, Dean Bertram’s acclaimed twin genre festivals in Eau Claire). All four have been included last year in Dread Central’s Top Genre Film Festivals on Earth, as voted by over 30 industry experts. The team is also waiting to hear from a number of other festivals – to be announced soon.
Adrian Țofei and Duru Yücel’s ambitious goal for We Put the World to Sleep was to combine the metaphysics of 2001: A Space Odyssey with the realism of The Blair Witch Project, two of the movies that impressed and influenced Țofei the most as a filmmaker. What followed was a wild odyssey not only on screen but in real life as well over the 10 years of production, with numerous unforeseen obstacles — from the pandemic to financial and creative ones — during which Duru and Adrian partially lived in the characters they played (named Adrian and Duru as well). The themes that were purely Sci-Fi when they began production in 2015 — such as AI and the confusion between what’s real and what’s not — by the time the movie was completed they became real worldwide fears. The script mostly consisted of plot points. While creating and maintaining an alternative psychological reality for their characters, Adrian & Duru shot countless hours of footage improvising guerrilla style in various locations across Romania, Türkiye and Ukraine, using a diverse international cast, then they put together the details of the story in post-production during a 4-years-long and complex editing process.
Teaser clip #1 “Murder in the Air” feat. Adrian Țofei :
Teaser clip #2 “Powerful in Death” feat. Duru Yücel:
Award wins & acceptance speeches at Nightmares Film Festival:
