Claim: The Cannes Film Festival was the first screening of Sleeping Beauty.

Sleeping Beauty is a 2011 Australian erotic drama film that was written and directed by Julia Leigh . It is her debut as a director . The film stars Emily Browning as a young university student who begins doing erotic freelance work in which she is required to sleep in bed alongside paying customers . The film is based on influences that include her own dream experiences , and the novels The House of the Sleeping Beauties and Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Nobel laureates Yasunari Kawabata and Gabriel Garcia Marquez , respectively .   The film premiered in May at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival as the first Competition entry to be screened . It was the first Australian film In Competition at Cannes since Moulin Rouge ! -LRB- 2001 -RRB- . Sleeping Beauty was released in Australia on 23 June 2011 . It premiered in US cinemas on 2 December 2011 on limited release . Overall critical reception of the film has been mixed , rising to some approval through June 2016 , after circulation of the film on the festival circuit ; audience reception , on the other hand , has been weak -LRB- less than a third of a sample of tens of thousands approving -RRB- .