Skip to main content
Filmarian
All films
Poster for The Sleeping Dictionary
Sign in to rateBe the first to rate
+ write a review
Released
2003 · FILM

The Sleeping Dictionary

“He's an unexpected education.”

Directed by
Guy Jenkin
Written by
Guy Jenkin
Runtime
109 min
DramaRomance

Synopsis

In the 1930s, British officer John Truscott travels to a remote village in colonial Malaysia with the goal of educating and Westernizing the local Iban population. There, he meets Selima, a local woman. Following traditional customs, Selima is tasked with sleeping with Truscott to teach him the native language and customs. As their relationship develops, the two fall in love, but their desire to marry faces opposition from both the colonial authorities and the local community.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

Related titles

No curated related titles yet. Use the edit affordance to add "More from this director", "Same franchise", or "Adaptation source material" entries — every change goes through the wiki review queue.

How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 19

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Lesley WalkerShot by Martin FuhrerScored by Simon BoswellDesigned by Simon Holland

Box Office

2003 · Box office

📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.0× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$58K

Budget$12.0M
Worldwide gross$58K
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • Selima & Johnde
  • Selima und Johnde
  • El lenguaje de los sueñoses
  • Amour interditfr
  • Piccolo dizionario amorosoit

Community tags

Be the first to tag this page — tags appear right away. Try a theme, capability, or subject (e.g. WWII, heist, slow burn, time travel, A24).

Help complete this page

We’re missing mpaa rating, logline. Sign in to add what you know.