Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has prompted a wealth of urgent nonfiction filmmaking documenting the harsh realities of life under siege, but comparatively little dramatic storytelling — a space that the new German-Ukrainian production “I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming” occupies with bold formal imagination and a commitment to illuminating lives neglected in wider views of the conflict. A timely collaboration between German director Isabelle Stever and her wife, Ukrainian screenwriter Anna Melikova, the film is an intimate, bracingly intersectional relationship drama centered on a queer Kyiv couple whose attempts to flee to safety are complicated by local prejudice: a reminder that selective discrimination can still endure within a collectively persecuted population.
Premiering in the main competition at Locarno, this is a warmer, more humane work than Stever’s last film, the coolly provocative 2022 incest drama “Grand Jeté.” If that film could travel, even securing U.S. distribution with Altered Innocence, there’s no reason to think “I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming” — with its topical subject matter and emotional accessibility, plus the imprimatur of producer Tom Tykwer — won’t gain wider exposure still. Paris-based outfit Outplay Films, which specializes in LGBTQ-themed titles, picked up the film for international sales shortly before its Locarno premiere; queer-oriented distributors and programmers will take particular interest in a work that would stand out for its candid depiction of transgender marriage even without its complicating wartime context.
