THE STORY – A timely and tender account of internal and external transformations, German filmmaker Isabelle Stever’s striking drama centers on a young queer couple navigating unprecedented waters in Ukraine during the height of the Russia invasion.
THE CAST – Tania Myronyshena, Markus Bright, Iryna Mak, Viktor Zhdanov & Maiia Sobolevska
THE TEAM – Isabelle Stever (Director) & Anna Melikova (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 100 Minutes
With the war between Russia and Ukraine now well into its fifth year, most of the most indelible images that we have seen from that conflict have come to us either from television or the internet. To date, the war’s presence in film has been limited: understandable, given how life-threatening film production can be in a war zone. It nonetheless has produced a number of powerful documentaries, from the Ukrainian side with Mstyslav Chernov’s Oscar-winning “20 Days in Mariupol” and last year’s “2000 Meters to Ardriivka” to the plight of Russian dissident journalists in Julia Loktev’s “My Undesirable Friends: Part I” and “Part II.” But narrative features set during the war, however, have been few and far between.
What those non-fiction films have in common is that they deal directly with the war, with reporters and soldiers as subjects, often on the front line. But what of the everyday Ukrainians whose lives have been upended by the fighting? Where are their stories? With “I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming,” German director Isabelle Stever and her wife, Ukrainian screenwriter Anna Melikova, have created the first major narrative that focuses on how Ukrainian families try to live their lives each day, with the possibility of death ever-present with each bombing raid. And Stever’s choice to make an unconventional family the center of her story is even sweeter.
In Kyiv, Olya (Tania Myronyshena) and Oleh (trans actor Markus Bright) are a queer couple hopelessly in love. But when Oleh feels the need to live a true life and transition into a trans man, Olya is conflicted. She wants to be with Oleh more than anyone else in the world, but she didn’t sign up for a heterosexual relationship. When Oleh promises to remain the same person, Olya finally agrees to marry him.
Two months later, Russian bombs begin falling on Kyiv, and Olya & Oleh realize that they need to get out of the city fast. They flee to Olya’s parents’ suburban home, where Maryna (Iryna Mak) and Vasyl (Viktor Zhdanov) welcome the couple with open arms. Maryna is determined to give her daughter as normal a life as possible (“War is war, but lunch is on schedule!”) as the couple plans to find a safe new life in Berlin. Seeing how warmly her parents have welcomed Oleh, Olya resists telling them about his transition, leading them to believe that he is indeed a cisgender male.
Other filmmakers might have been judgmental of Olya for withholding this information and made her the film’s villain. But Stever and Melikova, as queer filmmakers, bring a sensitivity and understanding to Olya’s actions that others might not. As gay people, many of us have faced the same dilemma in coming out to our families, anxious about whether revealing our true nature and that of those we love will change how our family feels about us. Stever makes it clear that holding back such information may have consequences, but she presents it as the right decision for Olya at the time.
This leads to the film’s central sequence: Olya and Oleh’s attempt to cross the border to safety in Berlin. The couple has come prepared — Oleh brought along an official medical document certifying his gender dysphoria and exempting him from military service. To do so, they must join hundreds of other refugees to pass through two checkpoints. At the first, two male soldiers are baffled by Oleh’s medical exemption and pass them along to the two female officers at the second checkpoint (“The girls will figure it out.”)
At that second checkpoint, however, they are met with hostility and transphobic comments from the two military women. They can allow Olya to proceed, but they refuse passage to Oleh. He may have this exemption, but all Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 are forbidden by law from leaving the country because they are subject to the military draft. Oleh, who fought to get the “M” on his passport, signifying him as male so he could marry Olya, faces an impossible dilemma. In order to leave Ukraine, he would have to detransition and relinquish his male identity in order to return to his dead gender. Or he can remain a man and risk being conscripted into the Ukrainian army. Either way, he must return home, and Olya, ever loyal, agrees to go with him.
For Oleh, he returns home to quite a different reception. Maryna and Vasyl, who now know the truth, feel mixed about his presence in their home. Vasyl wonders why Oleh didn’t wait to transition until he got to Berlin, while Maryna fixates on the need for the couple to have children. Even Olya accidentally trivializes her husband’s situation, telling him that a young war orphan (Maiia Sobolevska) staying with the family is terrified of being around Oleh because she “thinks” he is a man. Forced to face the rigid expectations of masculinity, Oleh begins to wonder if the only way for him to be taken seriously in his new gender is to join the army and fight on the front lines.
Stever never forgets that Olya & Oleh’s story, as dramatic as it may be, is one of many stories facing the Ukrainian people, and she communicates that visually by boldly placing consequential moments from their journey in the background of shots. As Oleh tries to explain to the border soldiers his exemption from conscription, for example, rows of people in front of him are being passed through the border in the foreground, an allowance that is denied to Oleh. This gives the narrative a believable, documentary-like feel that helps to make the couple’s story even more compelling.
It’s heartbreaking to consider, but when survival as a society becomes one’s primary focus in times of war, even those whom you love most intimately may put themselves and their families first. For Olya and Oleh, that becomes their greatest challenge, but Stever offers a ray of hope, suggesting their love may be strong enough to endure, even as Russian bombs fall around them.
