Before Dawn | Перед Світанком
IN DEVELOPMENT (Production Fall 2024)
A spacious apartment on the third floor is the only one with the lights on. It’s a warm island in the cold ocean of the outer world. The party is in full swing in there. Clinking glasses, chatter, and laughter drift out through the open balcony. It’s a classmate reunion. Ten years after graduation. They set the goal to hold on till dawn, just as they did on graduation night. And it all goes well until people start disappearing without leaving a trace.
Director: Yuliia Haleta
Producer: Polina Buchak
Story board artist: Inga Levi
Production: Ukraine
A note from the Director
This is not supposed to happen in your twenties. But your friends disappear from the world for good. Life goes on, as they say. And you keep pretending you’re alright. But people leave traces in your memories and your reality—an open piano, half-empty glass, or just a spin in the air.
This film is based on a metaphor. I attempt to shift the abstract psychological terms of loss and trauma into a physical domain, making it as sharp, sudden, and absurd, as it feels when you experience it. This metaphor has one problem though. It’s not quite a metaphor anymore. Not in my country. In the era of globalism, technology, and science, the whole generation of young and talented people is getting erased at a terrifyingly rapid pace.
Instead of travels, parties, food, cats, marriage proposals, and graduations, my social media feed turned into an endless obituary. Still processing the previous loss, I have to deal with another one. This is not supposed to happen in your twenties.
Before Dawn is extremely autobiographic, and not only in a general sense of what the people of my generation are going through. I also depict the places where I lived, describe my teenage photos, recite the words that I heard, and remember people I used to know.
Every detail is there for a reason, and I want it to speak back to the audience.
