“Alan Berliner has composed a deliriously intimate portrait of
himself, his obsessiveness and manias, and his inability to sleep
in his wonderfully indulgent film Wide Awake... a mesmerizing
picture of a lifelong struggle with sleep deprivation and the
elusive search for a cure... enlightening and informative... Wide
Awake takes us onan engrossing, even stimulating, walk
throughthe inner recesses of one man's mind.”

—Geoffrey Gilmore
Sundance Film Festival

“...another gloriously eccentric achievement by Alan Berliner...”

—Scott Foundas
LA Weekly

“Berliner... has the gift of addressing intimate subjects and
making them universal. Nowhere has he done this better
than with "'Wide Awake," in which he uses dazzlingly edited
movie outtakes, self-portraiture, TV commercials, home
movies, in-her-face footage of his comfortably sleeping wife...
and the advice of sleep specialists, all in an effort not just to
figure out why he can't sleep, but to determine what
sleep means. Berliner is always operating from a position of
bemusement... a consistently humorous business.”

—John Anderson
Variety

Wide Awake is possibly a minor masterpiece of documentary
impressionism, possibly an indulgently punchy memoir, probably both…
the film slips between the lyrical and the epic, effortlessly blends art
with kitsch, and the intimately particular with the groaningly universal…
Weird and wonderfully, Wide Awake really earns its subtitle—
Portrait of an Artist as Insomniac…

—Troy Patterson
Slate.com

…(an) exuberantly jazzy, jangly documentary… a personal vision,
… only someone obsessed with visual imagery could have made it…
a terrific film that ranges widely over not only the problems of
sleeplessness and its causes, remedies, and history, but about the
speeded-up, 24/7 society that exacerbates them. Among other things,
the film is a gorgeous visual tribute to Manhattan.

—Brendon Bernhard
The New York Sun

“... brilliantly edited... an idiosyncratic blend of the hilarious and
deeply personal... . Berliner creates visual metaphors that
evoke the workings of a restless mind.”

—Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

“It would be no stretch to say that with his latest effort, Alan
Berliner has created the Personal Essay Film. No small feat
that, given the expanse of personal mythology that Berliner –
one of the most influential in the nonfiction genre today – has
mined in his famously magical and richly textured
internationally acclaimed films.”

—Anne S. Lewis
Austin Chronicle

“... a gleefully masochistic fun-house ride through the remote
corners of his sleep-deprived mind... . Fast-paced and expertly
edited, the movie fixes Berliner among an elite group of
documentarians (Kate Davis and Michael Moore among
them) who understand entertainment better than most
of their contemporaries working in narrative features. You'll
be at rapt attention from the first frame to the last.”

—Steve Schneider
Orlando Sentinel

“WIDE AWAKE transcends Berliner’s own sleeplessness to
speak to the nature of creativity and the human challenge of
living in the shadow of the clock. Berliner fans will welcome
this latest offering from the modern master of
personal documentary filmmaking”

—2006 Florida Film Festival

“Berliner takes his celebrated self-scrutiny to dizzying
heights in this portrait of the artist as insomniac.
As his trademark virtuosic montage editing flashes by...
we realize the extent to which artistry can be tied to neurosis
– a message unusual in its candor and transparency”

—Max Goldberg
The San Francisco Bay Guardian

“Wide Awake bristles with extraordinary insight about the
power of sleep on the waking mind and ultimately becomes
an extraordinary document on the artistic process...”

—Thomas Logoreci
San Francisco International Film Festival

“Alan Berliner’s WIDE AWAKE is an eye opener... an
understanding of insomnia in cinematic terms... a delightful
collage of dream interpretation, interviews, quirky arcs of
logic, found footage, and pauses for discovery and self-
reflection.... transcends the personal to become a fascinating
study of social issues and the nature of creativity itself.”

—Susan Tavernetti
Filmfestivals.com

“On the first Saturday morning of the film festival, the badge-
holders' line snaked around the block outside the Alamo
Drafthouse theater for a screening of "Wide Awake," Alan
Berliner's smart, funny, densely layered journey through his
battles with insomnia, as well as his own psyche.”

—Ann Hornaday
Washington Post