Magic and mystery abound in this striking debut feature by filmmaker Kaizo Hayashi which follows a private detective who is hired to find the missing daughter of a silent film actress.

With a title that alludes to Shakespeare’s Hamlet and an intricate film-within-a-film structure, To Sleep So as to Dream is not a simple film to classify. Both a tribute to silent cinema and a playful deconstruction of it, Hayashi’s film is one of dreams, mysteries, and more than a handful of hardboiled elements.

The film is screening on a 16mm print from the ICA Archive.