After Dreaming
North American Premiere
Co-presented by the Armenian Film Society
Friday, April 10, 4:30 p.m. @ 2220 Arts & Archives
Q&A with writer/director Christine Haroutounian, moderated by filmmaker Courtney Stephens
Saturday, April 11, 2:30 p.m. @ Now Instant Image Hall
Q&A with writer/director Christine Haroutounian, moderated by filmmaker Rajee Samarasinghe
Director: Christine Haroutounian
Armenia/USA/Mexico, 2025, 105 min, DCP
Armenia, before peace yet after war. A soldier is asked to take a girl on a road trip to keep her father's death a secret from her.
The debut feature by Armenian-American filmmaker Christine Haroutounian is a marvel of transcendental style, a trance-inducing portrait of contemporary Armenia that evokes the the elliptical and hallucinatory films of Claire Denis and Carlos Reygadas (an executive producer) while defiantly creating its own grammar. In the aftermath of an unnamed war, a soldier (Davit Beybutyan) is sent by a family to take their daughter (Veronika Poghosyan) under his wing, while withholding the news that her father has been mistakenly killed. Traveling on the road, the couple are intimately drawn to each other as they drift through the war-torn landscape. Never resorting to easy metaphors, Haroutounian's film feels both intuitive and ritualistic in the depiction of a culture, culminating in a mesmerizing extended wedding sequence that is a work of pure cinema. -MG
In Armenian with English subtitles
Prior Screenings: 2025 Berlin International Film Festival (Forum)
Cast & Crew
Producers: Maxwell Schwartz, Christine Haroutounian, Brad Becker-Parton, Carlos Reygadas
Writer: Christine Haroutounian
Key Cast: Davit Beybutyan, Veronika Poghosyan
Director of Photography: Evgeny Rodin
Production Designer: Lusine Sargsyan
Casting Director: Ashkhen Grigoryan
Editor: Kiss Karamian
Sound Design: María Alejandra Rojas, Arturo Salazar
Sound Recording: Arsen Hakobyan, Vaghinak Karapetyan
Color: Mariano Renteria Garnica