'I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming' Wins Tokyo's Ethical Film Award

By Daniel Okafor

Isabelle Stever's "I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming" has won the Tokyo International Film Festival's Ethical Film Award, carrying a cash prize of JPY200,000 ($1,270). The Germany-Ukraine co-production tells the story of a trans man barred from leaving Ukraine on the eve of Russia's full-scale invasion.

The award, established in 2023 with sponsor Sumitomo Corporation, honors films that address issues such as the environment, poverty and discrimination. A jury selects the winner from three nominees drawn from the festival lineup.

Actor Isomura Hayato headed this year's jury. The two-time Japan Academy Film Prize winner also runs the Shizuoka Film Festival in his hometown. Three members of the festival's student PR team joined him on the panel.

The other nominees were:

• "Amadeo and the Hypothetical New World" from Brazil, directed by Brenda Lígia and Edu Felistoque
• "Time and Tide" from Australia, directed by Vee Shi

What is the film about?

Stever's drama opens in Kyiv at the end of 2021, months before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Oleh, a trans man, tries to leave the country to escape the coming war. He cannot, because of the gender listed on his documents. He stays behind with his partner, Olya, and the couple struggle to hold on to their relationship and their sense of self as the bombing draws closer.

Stever has form on the festival circuit. Her earlier films premiered at the Berlinale and at festivals in Toronto, Locarno and Busan. She worked on her two most recent features with her wife, the Ukrainian novelist and screenwriter Anna Melikova.

Why did the jury choose it?

Isomura said the jury rated the film highly for taking on gender against the backdrop of the current war between Russia and Ukraine. The film follows a couple swept up in that war whose identity, sense of purpose and values are shaken and denied, he said. It asks how people can go on living under those conditions. The jurors chose it in the hope that many people would see it and take some time to reflect.

A war film about paperwork. The bureaucracy is the villain here, and it arrives before the bombs do.

Stever could not travel to Tokyo. She accepted the award in a video message recorded during a break from teaching at a film school, and she used it to widen the film's frame.

"Queer is not only referring to LGBTQ+. It is, as well, referring to something that is not normalized," she said. "And we all know if everything would be normalized, we would stop breathing."

She linked that idea to autocratic regimes, where people must obey set standards and have no other options, and to Ukrainians fighting "so people can still breathe in this country."

What happens next?

The festival will send Stever a certificate and the JPY200,000 ($1,270) cash prize at a later date. For a film about people trapped by documents and borders, an award sponsored by a trading conglomerate is a tidy irony. Still, the prize money buys visibility, and visibility is what a jury hopes a film like this will get.