A Ukrainian queer couple face challenges unimaginable for most Western LGBTQI+ folk in I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming, a nuanced, finely lined drama that premiered in Locarno’s main competition. Produced by Tom Tykwer and Uwe Schott, this represents a second feature collaboration, after Grand Jeté, for married couple Anna Melikova, a Ukrainian writer, and German director Isabelle Stever, who were inspired by friends’ experiences back in Ukraine after the Russian invasion of 2022.

Dreaming explores what happens when 21st-century gender fluidity collides with the more rigid identity categories enforced by the state in a time of war. The core dramatic dilemma is thrust on fully transitioned trans man Oleh (Markus Bright), who suddenly faces military conscription along with the majority of Ukraine’s cis male population. Or, to paraphrase two cis female soldiers who turn Oleh back at the border, if he wants to be a man then he’ll have to fight for his country.

This horrifies his wife Olya (Tania Myronyshena), who wants them to emigrate to the safety of the EU as soon as possible, even if that means Oleh transitioning back to a female presentation. The film succeeds not only as an examination of the extraordinary quandary facing the couple but also simply as a compelling wartime drama featuring excellent performances from the two leads, who are, like most of the cast, non-professional actors. The film will cross continents next for the 64th edition of the New York Film Festival.

Smartly, Melikova’s script and Stever’s direction don’t obviously take either side, a neutrality that’s embedded even in the way Stever sets up the film’s opening scene, a flash-forward to a massive argument between the couple, observed as if by a neighbor through a window. Oleh has just received a conscription notice and seems inclined to report for service; Olya lets rip with what sounds like years of frustration, pointing out that she also didn’t sign up to be in a heterosexual relationship in the first place (evidently, the two were a lesbian couple before Oleh transitioned), and once again Oleh has made a decision without consulting her.

With the stakes thus established, the action rolls back to a happier time. On New Year’s Eve, 2021, Olya and Oleh are partying with other queer friends in a club, seemingly without a care in the world. During a phone call to Olya’s parents, she reveals that she’s getting married to a guy, an indirect way of proposing to her lover, who joyfully accepts.

A subsequent sex scene, discreetly shot but still pretty steamy, establishes the intense physical bond between the couple but also gives the film a chance to show that while Oleh has had top surgery, he’s not had visible bottom surgery like phalloplasty and metoidioplasty. Indeed, later in the film when the couple try to cross the border, Oleh reaches as if to unbutton his trousers in order to show the aforementioned female soldiers that he’s biologically female. They don’t care. What gender he has on his passport is the only thing that matters to the Ukrainian state.

In fact, thanks to regular testosterone injections, his natural height and the way his body has reacted to the “t”, he presents quite convincingly as male, with a hairy chest and a deep voice. In fact, as the film goes on, it’s implied that Olya’s parents — or at least her conventional Russophone mother Maryna (Iryna Mak) — think Oleh is a cis man, albeit one with some “effeminate” habits like not eating meat. (Maryna thinks vegetarianism is fine for women but men are healthier on a carnivore diet.)

Ultimately, however, the lifestyle differences between queer people like Olya and Oleh and straights like their extended family and neighbors end up mattering less than their shared identity as Ukrainians. As the movie goes on, and the invasion which was expected to be over after a few days drags into months and years, the horror of war solidifies the couple’s commitment both to each other and the country. They take in a young woman, a neighbor of Olya’s parents, who was brutalized in an unspecified way in her hometown of Bucha while they were away staying on the other side of the country, alluding to an actual atrocity in that municipality.

Snatches of real newscasts and YouTube videos provide a steady update on where the conflict has gotten as time passes, and even reveal that the options may not be so black and white for Oleh. It turns out there is a squadron in the army specifically for queer Ukrainians, for example, showing that being trans in the armed forces might not be as frightening as the couple first assumed.

And there sure isn’t an equivalent unit in the Russian Army under that country’s hideously homophobic regime, while the American armed forces are currently being forced by the Trump administration to push out trans and queer people from the enlisted population, while also cutting back on people of color and women in the higher ranks. If nothing else, this film could help bolster financial and military support for Ukraine in the EU and North America at a time when they’re badly in need of fresh funds and arms.

Glendale’s historic Alex theater is back in the picture business. For 35 years, since Terminator 2: Judgment Day debuted in 1991, the venue — where Walt Disney liked to test his cartoons — hadn’t screened first-run films. Then the Alex’s artistic director, Miles Williams, invested $500,000 in time for its centennial last year so that it could host state-of-the-art screenings. Now, the 900-seat house has been holding three screenings a day of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey on 70mm, becoming the epic’s highest-grossing venue in the country on the film format.

“This is a reclamation,” says Williams, a veteran live show curator and promoter who programmed the Ace and Orpheum theaters in downtown Los Angeles, collaborating with the L.A. Conservancy on its popular classic film series Last Remaining Seats. He brought in Taylor Umphenour — an in-demand projectionist who has worked with Imax as well as Nolan on his dailies — to help upgrade the Alex, including by guiding the construction of a new ground-floor projection booth that features windows: “You’re looking at the last performer to be part of the making of the film,” he explains.

The Alex’s packed performance calendar will now feature regular film screenings, including special-engagement runs of large-format studio productions. “I have people who are so moved to see a movie in this place again,” says Williams. Adds Umphenour: “Culturally, it’s an incredible thing to see. Somebody came in the other night and she was just crying with happiness.”

What’s happening at the Alex is part of a broader revival of L.A.’s cinema landscape in recent years, encompassing blockbuster altars to art houses. It runs counter to the relentless declinist narrative about the film industry since the pandemic — one that may be outdated anyway, given 2026’s roaring box office run, with the first weekend in August the most commercially successful in history thanks to The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

This renaissance includes, among studios, Sony’s announced restoration of the Cinerama Dome and rehabilitation of the adjacent ArcLight Hollywood with its theatrical exhibition chain Alamo Drafthouse, as well as Amazon’s lease of the Culver Theatre and Netflix’s purchase of the Egyptian in Hollywood and its partnership operation of the Bay in the Pacific Palisades. (The latter is returning this month, after the January 2025 wildfire prompted its closure — and in time for the upcoming Netflix wide release of Greta Gerwig’s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew.) Then there are the independent efforts, such as the Jason Reitman-led return of the Village in Westwood, Quentin Tarantino’s takeover of the Vista in Los Feliz and Kristen Stewart’s in-progress effort to resuscitate the Highland Theatre and cult rental nonprofit Vidiots’ pivot to exhibition in Eagle Rock.

“Every time a movie theater opens — or reopens — an angel gets its wings,” says Vidiots executive director Maggie Mackay. “Audiences never stopped loving the theatrical experience, an inherently social and fun art form for the masses. The pandemic only amplified their passion and interest.”

Sony Pictures chief Tom Rothman agrees: “It’s a simple thing. It’s fun to be entertained in the company of other people — it’s why Broadway is fun, it’s why Taylor Swift sells out stadiums. Human beings are communal beings.” To him, investing in the resurrection of the Dome (“the Eiffel Tower of movie theaters“) signifies his studio’s sustained commitment to prioritizing theatrical releases.

Escott O. Norton, executive director of the Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation, observes that the region’s Hollywood workers provide a core of support for these venues. “What we have here in this part of the country is unique with this audience of cinephiles,” he says.

But the current efflorescence can perhaps most be credited to the zeal of online communities whose social dynamics encourage avid, savvy viewership. “Letterboxd helps a lot,” explains independent exhibitor Rui Pereira, who will soon bring back the Bruin Theater to Westwood.

K.J. Relth-Miller, who heads the 5-year-old David Geffen Theatre as director of film programs at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, notes that “boutique streamers like Criterion and Mubi drive a curiosity to explore,” generating a positive feedback loop for diversified screenings. “We are selling out several times a week, the gamut from classics to underseen gems to brand-new restorations of forgotten movies from 30 years ago,” she says.

At the Alex, too, its stewards are witnessing the boom among their eager new crowd. “People often ask me when they get here, ‘Is it haunted?’ ” muses Williams as he stands at the apron of his theater, gazing up at its classic revival architecture. “I tell them, ‘Well, it’s haunted by the memories of all the people who spent time here.’ ” Beside him, Umphenour gestures out at the rows while the first patrons of the day take their seats for The Odyssey, its overture unfurling from the new sound system: “This is their haunt now. They’re keeping it haunted.”

This story appeared in the Aug. 12 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.