Vasilis Katsoupis directs Willem Dafoe in the movie Inside. Katsoupis makes his feature debut directing Dafoe. Katsoupis’s documentary My Friend Larry Cus received the Best Documentary Film nomination from the Los Angeles Greek Film Festival 2016.

Inside tells the story of Nemo, an art thief who enters a collector’s penthouse apartment hunting for valuable works of art. As he enters, the security system locks everything down. And then malfunctions. He’s locked inside. 

At first, he expects his partner-in-crime to arrive, then the security guards or the police. Or the owner. But no one comes. Then he hopes and prays for a cleaning lady to come. A servant. Anyone. But no one comes. And days stretch out into weeks and months. 

He’s locked inside a prison adorned with exquisite, strange, even eerie works of art: works that he both covets and admires but which are now, for him, useless. 

Instead, he must use all of his cunning and invention to survive. He must break into all the locked spaces to find all the food and liquid. 

The luxury penthouse—this location of perfection and aspiration — has become a prison. A desert island. A torture chamber. And then a place of revelation.