“The reality changed our plans,” explains Ukrainian writer Anna Melikova of her new screenplay “I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming.” She is seated next to her wife Isabelle Stever, the director of their new film, at the Locarno Film Festival. Their second creative collaboration after the Berlinale premiering “Grand Jeté” (2022), “I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming” marks Stever’s long-awaited return to Locarno after her debut “Gisela” played in the Filmmakers of the Present section back in 2005.
“I wanted to write a story about my friends, about their love story,” Melikova continues. And while “I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming” retains its original shape as a version of this queer love story (with a dash of Melikova and Stever’s own), the screenplay was forced to evolve rather abruptly in 2022 when Russia mounted a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Melikova’s Berlinale Kompagnon Fellowship Award-winning script was no longer simply about how transition impacts a couple, but how it does when their lives are interrupted by war.
Courtesy of X Filme Creative Pool
On New Year’s Eve, a few months before the invasion, Oleh (Markus Bright) has much to celebrate; he has finally received a passport with his name and gender marker adjusted to male. His long-term girlfriend Olya (Tania Myronyshena) gives him another reason later when she spontaneously proposes: the two can marry now that the state acknowledges them as man and wife. When their excitement for the future is disrupted by Russia’s attacks, the two forge an exit plan that tests the fundamentals of their commitment.
