Sleepless 2001

The opening scene centers on Angela [Barbara Lerici] as she finishes a difficult encounter, only to confront a man who recoils in shame and hurls his anger at her for not feeling fully satisfied. In the tense aftermath, she flees after accidentally knocking over a chest full of bladed weapons, a moment that lingers with her as she heads out into the night. She unwittingly pockets a blue scrapbook, its pages filled with memorabilia tied to a Turinese killer long nicknamed “The Dwarf Killer.” The threat of the unseen killer follows her even after the encounter, the ominous call piercing the quiet as she tries to seek help. With the train conductor offering little assistance, Angela reaches out to her dear friend Amanda [Conchita Puglisi] in a bid to retrieve the book at the station, hoping to lay low and stay one step ahead of a killer who seems to anticipate her every move.

On the journey itself, the killer catches up with Angela just as she attempts to close a door or leap from the moving train, and the pursuit ends in brutal violence: a severed finger and a deadly slash to her throat. The immediate danger isn’t over for Amanda, who, after Angela misses the station meet-up, boards the same train and discovers Angela’s gold pin and the blue scrapbook hiding behind a chair. Narrowly escaping a trap in the car, she seizes the book and drives away, only to be stalked and cornered by the killer in her own vehicle, who stabs her to death before reclaiming the scrapbook.

The investigation shifts to Detective Ulisse Moretti [Max von Sydow], once the lead figure on the original spate of murders from 1983, who has remained haunted by the case. He has kept in touch with Giacomo Gallo [Stefano Dionisi], the sole survivor of the worst night, who witnessed his mother die in a brutal act that left an English horn as a grim relic of the trauma. The early murders earned the label “The Dwarf Murders,” partly because Vincenzo de Fabritiis, a writer with dwarfism, stood as the suspect, though he died of natural causes and the case was deemed closed. Moretti is now retired from the force but instinctively ongoing in his pursuit of truth, not fully convinced of Fabritiis’ guilt, a stance that becomes more crucial as the new killings unfold.

Giacomo and his girlfriend Gloria [Chiara Caselli], together with his best friend Lorenzo Betti [Massimo Sarchielli], have just returned from studying abroad, a turn of events that stirs old memories for the trio. Their reunion unfolds against a backdrop of escalating violence around the city, with the killer’s MO becoming more elaborate and merciless. Nightlife figures become targets: Mel, a nightclub worker who is just finishing her shift, is stalked and dragged to an indoor fountain where she is killed in a brutal struggle that ends with her fingernails being ripped away. Moretti returns to the case unofficially, and Giacomo steps in with his own memories, hoping to uncover patterns that might explain the anomalies in the killings, particularly how the spree has moved from a single neighborhood back in 1983 to a wider city-wide rampage.

As the body count climbs, a man named Beppe uncovers information about the killer and uses it to threaten a confrontation. He is murdered before he can report what he has learned, a grim reminder that the killer is both careful and dangerous. Giacomo starts to pry into the network surrounding de Fabritiis’ circle, specifically focusing on Leone, a friend of Betti who also battles with a form of dwarfism and a penchant for alcohol. Laura, Vincent’s mother, is hesitant and grieving, still reeling from the public suspicion that followed her son’s death. The killer completes another savage act by pushing Dora, a resident of a building, against a wall with such force that her teeth are knocked out in the brutal impact.

As Moretti and Giacomo pore over the clues, they discover that the killer’s violence aligns with the disturbing nursery rhyme about a “Crazy Farmer,” a link that makes them rethink the perpetrator’s psychology. The rhyme hints at a farmer driven mad by noises around him, driving him to kill in a ritual-like pattern that mirrors the victims’ deaths. The investigators theorize that the killer’s madness has grown from a childhood-era fixation, possibly altered by hearing animal sounds that echo in the nursery rhyme. With this new understanding, they predict the next victim would be a dancer at a ballet, given the sequence’s animal motif, and they race to protect the performers. But they arrive too late: Mara [Rossella Lucà] is beheaded in a shocking display of the killer’s reach and deliberate ferocity.

Tragedy deepens as Laura witnesses a silhouette she mistakes for a threat, which sends her tumbling to her death from a balcony. The same ominous silhouette triggers a fatal heart attack in Moretti, sealing his own fate and heightening the sense of encroaching danger. Giacomo, now determined to bring the case to a close, searches Leone’s apartment for evidence only to discover Leone has been shot in the face. Betti’s father arrives on the scene, shoots Giacomo in the shoulder, and then, after a moment of hesitation, shoots himself in the head. In this spiraling confrontation, Giacomo pieces together the realization that the killer is not a dwarf but a child who can navigate the city with ease, a revelation that reframes the entire spree.

The climactic confrontation draws Giacomo face-to-face with Lorenzo [Roberto Zibetti], the actual killer masquerading behind a charming facade. A crucial piece of evidence emerges: a hiss that Giacomo recalls hearing during Mara’s murder, traced to Lorenzo’s medical inhaler. The Betti family moves to suppress Lorenzo, transferring him out of the country, while Mr. Betti takes aim at Leone to stifle a threat he believes Lorenzo cannot control. In a chilling moment, Lorenzo confesses with a cold detachment that he does not care about the destruction he has wrought, and he relishes the “game” of being pursued by Giacomo. The final act erupts in a brutal, bloody raid—police storm the apartment, Gloria consoles Giacomo as the killer’s spree appears to be over, and the city begins to exhale after a night of fear, tragedy, and hard-won truth.