“Welcome to Schlafraffenland. Are you well rested? I don't think so.”

This is how the head of a sleep retreat greets a group of visibly tired people. For a variety of reasons, they don't get enough sleep or don't find it restful. The retreat advertises with the promise that the participants will learn how to effectively and restfully "de-fatigue" themselves in just a few hours - an attractive offer in a world in which every single minute of life is capitalized, sleeping times strictly limited and the spheres of withdrawal and availability are blurred. At the centre of this apparently ominous institution's research is the REM sleep - a state in which the body lies in apparent rest while the eyes dance behind the eyelids, the brain sparks in the visual cortex and the prefrontal cortex no longer distinguishes between reality and fantasy. And while the head of the retreat wants to make dream sleep obsolete, she runs away from her own dreams, which are populated by haunting memories, repressed desires and wishes for the future. In the process, she comes dangerously close to the still mysterious threshold between waking, sleeping and dreaming ...

In the tension of scientific certainty and wild fantasy, Die andere Seite (The Other Side) invites us on a trip between relaxation, madness, social demands on our sleep culture and intimate needs.