At once a love letter to a beloved coastal community, an evocation of climate anxiety familiar to every Floridian and a confidently low-key flourish of cinematic poetry, “No Sleep Till” frames the town of Atlantic Beach through the lens of its young filmmaker’s childhood memories. 

“We were kind of stranded, isolated and shielded there, in this dreamy, dreamy little island,” says Alexandra Simpson, 27, who, while born and raised in France, spent considerable chunks of her pre-teen life visiting her father’s Atlantic Beach home. Now based in Los Angeles, she came back in 2023 to make “No Sleep Till,” which follows an eclectic cast of characters (a country singer, a stand-up comic, a pair of best friends and a storm chaser) who elect to hang tight despite the evacuation warning ahead of a looming hurricane. The camera bounces between them throughout a long, increasingly windy night as the town empties out, overseen by the glowing neon of cheap tourist motels and the escalating hum of frogs and crickets.  

“It is such a beautiful place,” Simpson says. “I’m absolutely in love. There’s no other place that makes me so emotional, whether it’s the artificial neon lights or the actual sunsets and the scenery. It’s amazing. It’s so wild. I can’t get enough of it, and I get very, very sad when I’m away from it for too long. It’s like missing a person.”

After its world premiere last summer at the Venice International Film Festival and subsequent American bow at the Museum of Modern Art’s New Directos/New Films program, “No Sleep Till” begins its theatrical run Friday at New York’s Metrograph, followed by a national rollout. Florida bookings—including a special screening in Atlantic Beach—are pending.

Recently, Simpson hopped on Zoom to talk with Flamingo about the film and her deep connection to the place that inspired it. 

YOUR FILM IS SO SPECIFIC TO ATLANTIC BEACH. HOW DID YOUR EXPERIENCES THERE SHAPE THE PROJECT?

Alexandra Simpson: My (film school) graduation film was shot in Florida with my father. It’s called “The Crying House,” and it’s associated with his (fictional) disappearance, along with the disappearance of this house of ours, along with the disappearance of this town. We grew up always hearing from him “this place is going to disappear soon.” He’s very dramatic in that way. It sparked the desire to shoot a real film there and focus on not only this feeling of imminent disappearance, but also a super nostalgic feeling of a storm coming and passing and how that is such a cherished memory of my childhood. Just hearing a storm come, the fear and the excitement that comes with it, and then once the storm passes. It’s these very simple emotions turned into this film that, to me, is very nostalgic, but also has a bit more universal feeling of stagnation or feeling of being a bit lost, paired with the desire and longings that I found in these characters.

THE ENSEMBLE CAST IS MADE UP OF MOSTLY NON-PROFESSIONAL ACTORS AND FEATURES A WIDE ASSORTMENT OF PERSONALITIES. WHAT TIES THEM ALL TOGETHER?

AS: I wanted to touch upon so many levels of fragility. That’s what everyone in this film has in common, this sort of precarity. Scouting the people that I would meet would spark ideas for certain characters. The storm chaser (Taylor Benton) was one of these examples where I found him online, and we got on a call. Storm chasers are mostly in the Midwest or whatnot, but he’s very passionate about storm chasing in Florida, specifically. He told me that it was interesting timing because his mother had just passed and she’s a reason that got him into storm chasing the first place, just by sitting on their porch and watching storms. They all had this big openness and this big vulnerability that I was able to work with. When I started auditioning, I hadn’t even finished the script. I was still writing and meeting the people I was auditioning. Casting really helped me crystallize the script.

EVEN THOUGH IT’S NOT A DOCUMENTARY, THE CASTING ADDS A SENSE OF REALISM THAT GROUNDS THE STORY. THESE PEOPLE ARE FAMILIAR.

AW: This BMX guy who’s in the background in the parking lot (scenes), who’s spinning around on his bike. That’s someone who reached out saying, “If you ever need a BMX professional …” He wanted to promote his work. It sparked this idea of this wandering character in the night who spins around on his bike. (The characters) sort of emerged in the process. These people aren’t people from my memory, necessarily; it’s a mix of memory, family and the whole process of producing this film, and being very attentive to what was emerging.

IN THE FILM’S PRESS NOTES, YOU TALK ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF TONE AND TEXTURE, WHICH CONTRIBUTE GREATLY TO ITS HANGOUT VIBE. SO MUCH IS TOLD THROUGH GESTURES AND MOOD. HOW DID THAT SHADE THE STORY FOR YOU?

AS: When I finished the film, I was like, “Oh, this is super accessible. Like, this is straight up narrative storytelling,” not that far out, not that experimental. I wrote these characters in a way that I didn’t want to psychologize them. Therefore, they don’t really have a past, they don’t have a future. You’re really with them in the present moment. But as you said, little gestures or little details reveal so much, if you’re willing to make that effort of projecting onto them and thinking of it beyond what you’re seeing in the present moment. That’s such an exciting idea to me. Like in Chantal Akerman’s “Toute une nuit” (“All Night Long”), which was a big reference, you just catch these people in the middle of the night and there’s so much to imagine. It’s like walking in the subway and looking at people and imagining their lives.

I was still writing and meeting the people I was auditioning. Casting really helped me crystallize the script.
—Alexandra Simpson

WERE YOU ABLE TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF SHOOTING DURING ANY REAL HURRICANES?

AS: We did plan to shoot during the peak of hurricane season. Not that we wanted to be stranded in a hurricane—we would have postponed or something. But it was a period of the year that has a lot of these storms and a lot of wind as well. We really seized any occasion for wind in the trees or wind in the hair. We were very attentive to the weather. But it was challenging, honestly, because it would go from super sunny and super calm to super windy. Sometimes we had to stop in the middle of the night because it started raining crazy. We recomposed the approach of the storm with the sound. We have these images, but it was really all about the sound. There are some shots where you hear wind and there’s absolutely no wind.

WHAT WAS PREPARING FOR A HURRICANE LIKE GROWING UP?

AS: When I was six or seven, a hurricane was coming, and my father made such a thing out of it. He barricaded the house, he bought candles. It was so thrilling. I don’t think I was aware of the danger. Though, when I woke up, I was terrified. I was like, what happened? Are we still here? Did we make it? But it was really a magical moment that I’m sure marked my memories. But not just hurricanes. There are storms that will make our house completely tremble and objects fall. I would get very scared when I was young. What was so strange is that it would be so sunny, and then a huge storm would hit, and then minutes after it would be back to like nothing happened. Such an odd feeling.

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