About the Production

The X-Filme creative pool was formed in 1993 by filmmakers Tom Tykwer, Dani Levy, Wolfgang Becker, and producer Stefan Arndt. Structurally modeled after the original United Artists, the goal was to create a creative collective with a willingness, as Arndt has said "to plunge our last dollar, even unwisely, into our movies."

In 1998, X-Filme had their greatest success to date with the release of Tykwer’s Run Lola Run, which became the second most popular film in Germany that year, selling over two million tickets, and went on to enormous success in its US release. The film so captured the zeitgeist of modern-day youth in Germany, Lola inspired hairdos began popping up all over the country and even inspired an attempt by Berlin mayor Eberhard Diepgen to capitalize on its success with campaign propaganda modeled after the film. (It didn’t work. Tykwer, not a fan of Diepgen, took legal steps to stop the posters).

Much like Run Lola Run, Winter Sleepers, filmed directly before Lola in 1997, is at its core a film about the possibility of love in the face of impossible circumstances. "Duration," says Tykwer, "is the problem with love: that awful intimacy which we cannot bear and yet always seek. I can only accept a love relationship as a passionate entanglement." Also like Lola, the film is about people in their 20’s struggling against an oppressive environment, succeeding or failing based on their moral decisions.

One of the aspects of the film that sets it apart from Tykwer’s other work is that the film is based on an outside source, the novel, Expense of Spirit, by Anne-Françoise Pyszora. In the novel, Tykwer found an exploration of a theme that had permeated his earlier work, the idea of a generation in their late twenties "drifting along without orientation, revolving around themselves and each other."