A well-driller is mistaken for an enemy and killed in the countryside. Back in the city, his family decides to hide his death from his daughter, Claudette. Before the funeral, they ask Atom, a soldier, to take her away. He tells her that the family is waiting at a remote monastery, and they set out across the country together.
Haroutounian made the film “the way we live life, through the senses,” shooting in real locations to which she was deeply connected and casting locals who had largely never acted. Through Evgeny Rodin’s volatile images and the film’s precise play of sound and silence, the physical world becomes a gateway to the intangible. The road trip slowly loosens into a fever dream, where faces and places appear just as they are falling away.
War haunts every landscape, yet the film does not try to explain politics. Haroutounian calls it “a cinematic prayer,” made after her personal faith in peace was gone. Abject, sublime and primal, After Dreaming carries a girl and a soldier through a landlocked country that feels at once forsaken and shining.
After Dreaming is also selected as MIRAGE Film of the Year for 2026. Each year MIRAGE presents a film to decorate the visual language of the festival, and we are delighted to present such a sensuous and delicate film for our posters, graphics and visuals.
