Sleeping Sickness (2011)

Well, its Monday, you know what that means…time for another installment of Mubi Monday! This week we’re going to rural Cameroon with…Sleeping Sickness (2011).

Title: Sleeping Sickness

Director: Ulrich Köhler

Released: February 12, 2011 (Germany)

Runtime: 1 hour 31 minutes

Available to stream: Exclusively on Mubi

Ebbo Velten (Pierre Bokma) is a doctor who has been working in Cameroon for the last five years. During that time, he’s been heading up a program for sleeping sickness. Results have been promising, so much so that new cases are now few and far between.

However, now that cases are sparse, the funding for his program is in danger of being taken away. As a result, Dr. Velten and his wife are preparing to return to Europe. Before they return, their daughter has flown down to spend some time with them in Cameroon before they depart.

When the day comes to return to Europe, Mrs. Velten and their daughter are prepared to leave. Meanwhile, Dr. Velten is having trouble with the idea of leaving Cameroon for a continent he hasn’t had a connection with for five years. We see Dr. Velten wave to his family as they board their departing flight and then we cut to black.

We’ve now jumped three years into the future.

This is where we meet Dr. Alex Nzila (Jean-Christophe Folly). Dr. Nzila is a French-born family physician, well…he was. Alex quit his job and travels to Cameroon to evaluate Dr. Velten’s sleep sickness program for the World Health Organization.

Upon his arrival, Dr. Nzila quickly learns that he’s going to have a bit of a learning curve before feeling comfortable and assimilated in Cameroon. To make matters worse, Dr. Velten seems to be avoiding him, thus delaying his evaluation of the program. Eventually, their paths do cross and Dr. Nzila immediately begins questioning the rationale behind the program continuing to receive funding.

Will Dr. Velten be able to keep his program afloat and keep the funding coming?

As I was looking for a movie to review this week, I happened to reference my viewing map over on Letterboxd. I noticed that I hadn’t seen a movie from Cameroon, so after filtering through which ones were available on Mubi, I found Sleeping Sickness (2011). Well, after an hour and a half, I myself was fighting sleep.

The biggest issue with Sleeping Sickness (2011) is that it is painfully boring. There’s a severe lack of depth to each character. So much so, that I never found myself able to invest in any of them or their outcomes.

The story teases us with numerous topics and subplots but never thoroughly explores any of them. We have the European doctor who finds himself immersed in the culture of Cameroon and the doctor of African descent who is struggling to assimilate. The fact that the same European doctor decided to start his second family while staying in Cameroon. And we also have the elephant in the room that is corruption and misuse of aid funding.

Take one, or even a mixture of, any of those topics and flesh it out some, then we’d have an interesting movie. Instead, we see these topics hinted at but never really explored nor given the attention needed to strengthen the overall story at hand.

While Sleeping Sickness (2011) has a ton of potential, it unfortunately falls short.

It is visually appealing and gives an ending that is open to interpretation, but overall, I would not rush to view it.

Well, now it’s your turn.

If you’ve seen Sleeping Sickness (2011), let me know what you thought of it in the comments below or by reaching out to me on social media!

As always, you can keep up with everything else that I’ve been watching over on my Letterboxd account.