A Film Shaped by War: 'I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming' Premieres at Locarno
A transgender love story that had to be rewritten when Russia invaded Ukraine has had its world premiere in the International Competition at the Locarno Film Festival. I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming, a German-Ukrainian co-production directed by Isabelle Stever and written by her wife Anna Melikova, was selected for the Concorso Internazionale — the festival's main competition strand — and has already been picked up for distribution by Outplay Films Variety.
The screenplay, which won the Berlinale Kompagnon Fellowship Award, began as a story about how transition impacts a couple. Then, in 2022, Russia mounted a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and Melikova's script had to evolve — from an intimate drama into one interrupted by war Variety.
The film opens on New Year's Eve, a few months before the invasion. A character named Oleh receives a passport with his name and gender marker corrected to male. His long-term girlfriend Olya proposes to him. Oleh is played by Markus Bright, a transgender man, and Olya by Tania Myronyshena — both non-professional actors Variety.
Myronyshena is, in fact, a journalist at the Kyiv Independent. Melikova found her by chance, scrolling through Instagram. Bright came through a different kind of casting call: Melikova was serving on a festival jury in Kyiv in 2026, asked whether anyone knew a suitable transgender actor, and within five minutes people were sending her his pictures Variety.
Stever and Melikova had originally planned to shoot only a few small exterior scenes in Ukraine. After visiting Kyiv to cast, they decided to film more there, citing authenticity as the reason. The decision carried real consequences: during one early scene, drone sounds could be heard nearby as Russia's war raged in the background, and the shoot had to move inside Variety.
This is Stever's second creative collaboration with Melikova, after Grand Jeté, which premiered at the Berlinale in 2022. It also marks her return to Locarno after her debut Gisela played the Filmmakers of the Present section in 2005 Variety. The Locarno festival lists the film as a 2026 Germany-Ukraine production, 100 minutes, in Ukrainian, on DCP Locarno Film Festival.
The film has also been nominated for the Pardo for Change award at Locarno Locarno Film Festival, and beyond the Swiss festival circuit it will screen in the Main Slate of the 2026 New York Film Festival IndieWire.
