How does war change love? And how does the transition from peace to warfare, in parallel with a gender transition, affect a queer couple? I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming, world-premiering on Friday, Aug. 7, in the international competition program of the 79^th edition of the Locarno Film Festival, gives audiences a chance to explore those questions, while telling a deeply personal story that unfolds amid Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The love between Olya and Oleh, a young queer Ukrainian couple, is put to the test when one of the partners’ gender transition collides with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The transition allows the couple to get married, but personal and national identity struggles stir debate.

“As war narrows and challenges the boundaries of masculinity and femininity, they struggle to preserve their bond and sense of self,” the Locarno website preview notes. And it hints at one question that takes center stage: “What does it mean to be a man in a country that is fighting for its identity and survival?”

Starring Tania Myronyshena and Markus Bright, the film is produced by Uwe Schott and Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run, The Light) of X Filme Creative Pool. The cinematographer is Volodymyr Usyk, while
Paul Groebel and Laura Lauzemis are the editors. Outplay Films is handling international sales.

Screenwriter Anna Melikova and director Isabelle Stever (The Weather Inside, Portrait of a Married Couple), who are married and live in Germany, collaborated on the film.

“We, a Ukrainian-German filmmaker duo, place war’s brutality against the fragile quiet,” says Stever in a director’s note. “Inspired by our friends’ journey through gender transition and by cast and crew experiences, we explore the transition of war into everyday life.”

Melikova and Stever talked to THR about the personal experiences that inspired I Rarely Wake up Dreaming, how Russia’s invasion changed the project and the challenges of filming in Ukraine during the ongoing war.

How did you two approach telling this story, and were you worried that people might not want to hear more about the war in Ukraine once it became a regular topic in the news? 

ANNA MELIKOVA When I first wanted to write the story, the war wasn’t involved. The film is based on the real story of my friends, a queer couple, and I already wanted to write the script before the full-scale invasion.

They married in Kyiv as a heterosexual couple because in Ukraine it’s not possible for a homosexual couple to get married. Isabelle and I are married, but here in Germany. But because one of the partners changed their gender marker from female to male, they could be married. And I thought that is a very interesting story. 

That’s how my brain works. I can feel deeply with my friends and what they feel, but I also think it’s such an interesting story. I thought that on the one hand it’s unique and very special, but on the other hand, maybe many people, regardless of their sexual orientation, could connect with this story and could [understand] this problem. Many of us know that when we are in a long relationship, we change in this relationship, both partners. And sometimes it’s not so easy to accept all these changes immediately — [whether] changes in appearance or in character. 

So I wanted to write about this relationship and about how gender transition influences the relationship. But then the full-scale invasion started, and I understood that if I write this, it will not only be a private story but also have a social, political and historical level. So, once I started to write it, it was already clear to me that I would combine these two big topics: gender transition and war.

STEVER It’s a personal approach to this issue — it’s not something you read in the paper. I was in Kyiv several times before the full-scale invasion started, and I met some friends of Anna’s, queer and not queer people. They were very fragile, young, sensitive musicians and filmmakers etc. They are people I could connect with. So when the full-scale invasion happened, I was in shock, and I was more touched on a personal level.

I was with men before I met Anna, and I thought that between a woman and a man it is not such a big step because it’s about love, and gender is just a little attribute. This is also a topic of the film — gender roles in society and expectations of gender roles. And these expectations, of course, are very much challenged in wartime. When a society falls under the pressure of violence and fear, gender roles are challenged, narrowed, and reshaped.

Did you at times feel any pressure to stay close to your friends’ real-life story instead of fictionalizing the story more and approach it more like a documentarian?

MELIKOVA When I decided to write about them, I visited them twice, and I recorded many conversations with them. Sometimes we spoke all three of us. Sometimes I spoke tete-a-tete only with one person.
And then I started to write the script. But I also visited many other friends, [some] who escaped the war, others who stayed in Ukraine. And I asked them about the first weeks of the full-scale invasion, because I wasn’t in Ukraine; I was in Berlin, so I didn’t experience it myself. All sorts of details I picked up from their experiences, and I tried to enrich the main story with them. And I fictionalized the main story of this couple.

STEVER Everything in this script comes from reality, but not all comes from this one couple.

Isabelle, can you tell me about your work with the actors? They don’t always necessarily say things, but you can feel layers of emotions.

STEVER It was a very, very long and very engaged preparation. It lasted about half a year. First was the casting, and then we did a lot of rehearsing. I don’t work with the script but with improvisations. Here, the couple met each other in their roles, and they went through the story, and they developed while they did. They developed the characters through improvisations. So they get space to add their own qualities; they understand the characters, how they click, and they really develop big trust with each other.

Then when you get to the set, it is still something unpredictable, like natural freestyling between them, so they can really react to each other. They added stuff of their own understanding to the dialogues and adapted them to their personality. So that was very good to keep this freshness on set. We filmed for about a year in chapters. 

Do the actors have much acting experience?

MELIKOVA They are non-professional actors, so it’s their first appearance in cinema. 

STEVER You asked about a documentary [approach earlier]. It is really amazing that some people who have seen the film said it has a documentary feeling. The film language is not documentary-like at all, but it still opens the space to this feeling that there’s something real. It has a [sense of] authenticity, and that’s what we wanted.

It also feels timely.

STEVER Timely is very important because this film is also about the non-professional actors and about these kids today and their set of values and the full-scale invasion colliding with this set of values. So timely is something that fits this film. I usually like timeless films, but this film was supposed to be timely. We really worked on this feeling.

Where does the title, I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming, come from?

STEVER The title came from me. I had a lot of title ideas, and this one survived. I just liked it. And now I find that every day, I have different associations. There are a lot of options. It’s a title that can, in a way, be about: Is this a time to wake up? Is there still the option of dreaming? Is this all a nightmare we are in? 

Was there any scene that was particularly difficult to film?

STEVER There were a lot of difficult scenes. We had 20 filming days in or surrounding Kyiv, which is a war zone, and there’s a curfew. There are air raids every night. There is danger of ballistic rockets. GPS gets corrupted, so crew members don’t find the set. And also, if you have a lot of extras and a big team, it’s a question of security and how to evacuate them in case of an attack. If you’re a director, you’re obsessed with the film, but in this case, there is something bigger than the project. It’s really the security of the team and the actors and everybody.

The border scene in the film is obvious as a difficult scene. We had 110 extras. We had 80 cars. We had 10 animals. We had three days to film it, which sounds like a luxury, but we [really only] had three hours. The team has to be home at midnight, and it takes two hours for them to clean up the set before they go home. So, we had to stop at 10 p.m. And to get the right [light], we had to film between sunset and 10.

MELIKOVA This border in the film was built; it’s not a real border, so of course it took time to build everything. We had one hour to film, and then our first AD or the line producer said to Isabelle, “Now we have a ballistic rocket coming in our direction.

STEVER At that point, some of the crew started to laugh because that was the only possible reaction. Sometimes, the Ukrainians are not shocked anymore if there’s an air raid because they have that almost every day. But things were okay because the Ukrainian army shot down the [rocket]. But we always made sure that everybody on the set knew they could go to a shelter any time. If they stayed, it was always their decision.

I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming is your second film working together. Will we see more films from you two? And do you have new projects in the works?

STEVER Yes, more than one. And yeah, we would like to work together again. We are trying to find a project which Anna wants to write, and I would like to direct.

MELIKOVA Before this project, we also had some ideas for different projects. But then this happened, and then I understood that this would be my next script. There was no doubt. I really felt now it’s time for this.