Isabelle Stever brings I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming to Seminci’s competition
Isabelle Stever presented the Spanish premiere of I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming in Seminci’s official competition in Valladolid. Written by Anna Melikova, the film follows a Ukrainian queer couple trying to preserve their relationship during Russia’s invasion. Stever described a screenplay informed by experiences within Melikova’s circle while protecting those people’s privacy. The film is competing for the festival’s Golden Spike.
Arts··Evening
A Ukrainian couple’s story enters the competition
German director Isabelle Stever presented the Spanish premiere of I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming in the official competition of the 71st Seminci, the Valladolid International Film Festival. Her new feature follows a young Ukrainian queer couple whose relationship and personal choices are disrupted by war. The film was written and shot during the conflict rather than reconstructed only after it had ended.[1], [2]
Ukrainian screenwriter Anna Melikova wrote the screenplay. She and Stever previously worked together on Grand Jeté, released in 2022. The new collaboration grew from experiences Melikova gathered among people close to her after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Stever said they sought to preserve those people’s privacy while showing how the war affected members of the LGBTQ+ community.[1]
The camera’s movement changes with the characters’ freedom
Stever located the story’s origins in Kyiv neighbourhoods after the invasion began in February 2022. She described a wish to bear witness to war entering people’s lives without exploiting the conflict. The relationship between Olga and Oleh provides the centre of the drama, with violence increasingly shaping their surroundings while remaining largely in the background of the images.[1]
The director said this shrinking space guided the film’s visual design. At first, the characters can choose how to move within the frame and beyond it. As the story progresses, the images become more rigid and static. She approached the fiction with a near-documentary method, looking for particular perspectives and small details that would keep the events feeling alive on screen.[1]
Gender roles are examined through the relationship
Oleh’s wish for a male body is part of the film’s account of gender identity. Stever described that wish as urgent and connected to his need to feel himself. She said the story also examines the social roles attached to masculinity during war. She explained these ideas while discussing the character’s transformation and the pressures he encounters.[1]
Stever linked the couple’s ability to ask questions about themselves to having room to think outside imposed expectations. She also said some cast members had not previously met transgender people and valued that encounter during the production. At the presentation, she expressed the hope that images could help audiences understand experiences of war that are difficult to convey through explanation alone.[1]
