Synopsis

We begin the story in the early 2000s in Bristol, UK. Brian: quiet, observant, fluent in pop-culture as emotional code, meets Alina: sharp, fearless, and impossible to hold onto. They bond over bad movie sequels, immigrant childhoods, and the kind of silence that speaks louder than words. It feels like fate, but when Alina transfers abroad, it triggers a decade-long orbit of near misses and unresolved gravity.

Years later, their paths cross in New York. Brian, now a successful equities trader, finds his carefully constructed life thrown into disarray when he hosts a newly single Alina, an encounter that reopens old wounds and creates new ones. Under the weight of their seemingly inescapable gravity, he invites her into another orbit — as his plus one to a friend’s upcoming destination wedding in New Zealand.

But in the weeks before the trip, the emotional terrain is complicated by an unexpected connection with Leah — no weight, no history, just presence — a glimpse of emotional openess and reciprocity. Brian arrives at the dreamlike wedding at a true emotional crossroads. There, meeting Alina as promised, their reunion pushes their unspoken connection to breaking point, just as the global financial crisis begins to unravel Brian’s world.

As the financial turmoil reaches its peak, Brian loses everything. Shattered, he retreats to his adopted home in London to rebuild a life from the ashes. When Alina reaches out again — their paths collide for the final time in Phuket, Thailand — where memory, loyalty and destiny come to a head.

Told across five acts and an epilogue, The Sleeping Man in Orbit builds from quiet intimacy to a reckoning that reframes everything that came before. What begins as a slow-burn romance reveals itself on rewatch as a genre bending puzzle box — weaving generational silence, emotional inheritance and the pop-culture surrogates that have held it all together.

Will Brian confront the true nature of their bond and discover his own gravitational pull before it’s too late? Or will he remain forever trapped in a VHS watch-rewind loop, while the tape degrades to static with every pass?