Director: Henry Nelson
Raised off the grid on the fringe of a leafy Ohio college town, a teenage girl and the father who home-schooled her outside every system face a reckoning in Henry Nelson's Asleep in My Palm.
What is Asleep in My Palm about?
Terry has spent years keeping his daughter Cheyenne away from schools, doctors, and the expectations that come with a fixed address, building a life for the two of them on land at the edge of an elite liberal arts campus in northeastern Ohio. Their routine — self-sufficient, isolated, and shaped entirely around Terry's own rules — has worked for a childhood, but Cheyenne is no longer a child, and the world just past the tree line keeps pulling at her curiosity. As she starts noticing what she has been shielded from, cracks form in the arrangement her father built to protect her, and the film follows what happens when a life designed around isolation runs up against a daughter's need to see more of the world than her father is willing to show her. Told with a patient, observational rhythm rather than melodrama, it studies a bond that is loving and confining at once.
Cast & crew
Tim Blake Nelson plays Terry, and the film is directed by his son Henry Nelson, giving the father-daughter dynamic on screen an unusual real-life resonance. Chloë Kerwin plays Cheyenne, with Grant Harvey, Gus Birney, Jared Abrahamson, David Aaron Baker, R. Scott Purdy, and Christopher Mele completing the cast around the pair.
Context & significance
Released in 2024, Asleep in My Palm marks Henry Nelson's feature directing work built around his father Tim Blake Nelson's lead performance. Set in a small pocket of northeastern Ohio near a liberal arts college, the film uses the contrast between an insular off-grid household and the world of a nearby campus to frame its story of a young woman coming into her own. Running 88 minutes, it favors a quiet, character-driven pace over plot mechanics.
Where & how to watch
Asleep in My Palm streams on K-Time once you log in with a free account, with a Persian dub and Persian subtitles both available so you can watch in whichever way feels most natural. K-Time is built around a Farsi-first viewing experience for Persian-speaking audiences abroad, and everything on this page — synopsis, cast, and background — can be read without logging in at all.