Christine Haroutounian’s feature-length debut After Dreaming, shot two years ago in Armenia by the US-based director and screenwriter suggests from its opening minutes that the viewer is invited not into an “after,” but into the dream itself, a space where delirium, the subconscious, and collective trauma intertwine. The film unfolds through a sequence of symbolic, ethereal, and at times deliberately non-rational actions and figures that drift through a semi-awake, imaginary, and hallucinatory atmosphere.
Text: Diana Martirosyan
The opening image of a white horse standing in water functions less as narrative exposition than as a dreamlike signifier, setting the tone for the one hour and forty-five minutes that follow. Throughout the film, poetry, ambiguity, and symbolism replace linear storytelling. Early on, a man digging a well is killed, an act presented without clear motive or consequence. As figures emerging from the fog remark, “the war is not over,” the event is framed as part of an unresolved collective condition rather than an isolated incident.
At the center of the story is Atom (Davit Beybutyan), a soldier whose name and demeanor suggest restraint, strength, and emotional distance. He is asked to care for Claudette (Venorika Poghosyan), a young girl whose father was killed while digging the well, and to accompany her to another city. While the premise appears straightforward, uncertainty quickly enters the narrative: the destination remains vague, as does the reason for entrusting the girl to Atom during her father’s funeral. As a gesture of gratitude, Claudette’s mother gives Atom her golden cross, a moment that can be read as a subtle commentary on how faith, obligation, and survival intersect within the film’s moral landscape.
Atom gradually emerges as a broader representation of the Armenian man and soldier, shaped by expectations of patriotism and national duty while remaining emotionally conflicted and materially grounded. Outwardly composed and masculine, he nonetheless reveals vulnerability, emotional isolation, and an unfulfilled need for intimacy. These themes are explored not through a tightly structured plot but through episodic scenes that resemble sketches: Atom and Claudette bathing in a stranger’s home, or arriving in an unnamed village where the inhabitants speak in stylized, almost declarative phrases. Such moments introduce a sense of estrangement, contrasting with the otherwise naturalistic texture of the film.
Haroutounian’s depiction of Armenian women similarly carries an element of irony. Female characters are largely framed within traditional roles, mother or bride, and appear less as fully individualized figures than as symbolic presences shaped by inherited social expectations. The idea of marriage as a continuation of national and military continuity is emphasized through an extended zurna-and-dhol sequence whose repetitive rhythm creates a hypnotic effect.
Wedding scenes are marked by restraint rather than celebration: formal poses, fixed smiles, and carefully staged gestures dominate the frame. Visual contrasts further complicate the temporal setting: modern tattoos on grooms coexist with hairstyles and costumes reminiscent of 1990s kitsch. This visual ambiguity suggests an Armenia that exists outside a specific historical moment, a space where certain social patterns repeat and remain unresolved.
One of the film’s most striking sequences shows Atom participating in the traditional Berd dance, surrounded by intense, forceful movements. His eventual collapse within the ritual conveys the physical and emotional pressure placed upon the individual by rigid national and gender structures.
The film also incorporates archival television footage of a mass wedding ceremony held years ago in Shushi, linking church, marriage, and Artsakh into a single symbolic framework. Haroutounian choosen not to translate key references or commentary, a decision that introduces distance for non-Armenian audiences. During the film’s world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival, this approach left parts of the sequence intentionally opaque, blurring the line between directorial interpretation and documentary reality.
In its final moments, fragmented sounds fill an open field as the camera briefly captures a lone church and rows of soldiers, young, anonymous, and innumerable. The closing images reinforce the film’s broader perspective: a gaze shaped by the diaspora, expressed through literary, abstract language and elusive visual forms. Rather than offering clear resolutions, After Dreaming raises enduring questions about the place of the individual, both Armenian woman and Armenian man, within persistent social, national, and cultural frameworks.
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