After Dawn

Pawel is absolutely positive that separation has completely dampened his feelings for the young man he was in love with. But when he finds an unexpected visitor at home one rainy afternoon, it turns out it might all have been a little different.

  • Nicolas Graux
    Director
    Boy with the Devil (short)
  • Nicolas Graux
    Writer
    Boy with the Devil (short)
  • Thomas Meys
    Producer
  • Piotr Biedron
    Key Cast
    "Pawel"
  • Tijmen Govaerts
    Key Cast
    "Clément"
  • Izabela Gwizdak
    Key Cast
    "Martyna"
  • Lydia Indjova
    Key Cast
    "Ewa"
  • Lenka Fillnerova
    Editing
  • Thomas Schira
    Cinematography
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Passée l'aube
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Runtime:
    24 minutes 9 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    January 1, 2017
  • Production Budget:
    60,000 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Belgium
  • Country of Filming:
    Poland
  • Language:
    English, Polish
  • Shooting Format:
    Black Magic HD
  • Aspect Ratio:
    4:3
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • 30th Festival Premiers Plans d'Angers
    Angers
    France
    January 12, 2018
    European Short Films Competition
  • Mecal Pro 2018
    Barcelona
    Spain
    March 1, 2018
    Spanish Premiere
    International Competition
  • 24th Palm Springs International Short Film Festival
    Palm Springs
    United States
    June 19, 2018
    US Premiere
    International Competition
  • 23rd Sarajevo Film Festival
    Sarajevo
    Bosnia and Herzegovina
    August 11, 2017
    International Premiere
    European Shorts Competition
  • TiSFF - Thess International Short Film Festival - International Competition
    Thessaloniki
    Greece
    December 14, 2017
    Greece Premiere
    CINEMATIC ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
  • 32nd Festival International du Film Francophone - National Competition
    Namur
    Belgium
    October 1, 2017
    BEST ACTING PRIZE : Piotr Biedron & Tijmen Govaerts
  • Travelling Film Festival
    Rennes
    France
    February 20, 2018
    Short Films Competition
  • Cellu l'art Short Film Festival Jena
    Jena
    Germany
    April 26, 2018
    German Premiere
    Queer Shorts Programme
  • ONE SHOT 16th International Short Film Festival
    Yerevan
    Armenia
    June 4, 2018
    Armenian Premiere
    Official Selection
  • Friss Hús Budapest International Short Film Festival
    Budapest
    Hungary
    April 3, 2018
    Hungarian Premiere
    LGBT programme
  • WIZ-ART Lviv International Short Film Festival
    Lviv
    Ukraine
    August 11, 2018
    Ukrainian Premiere
    International Competition
  • Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival
    Rhode Island
    United States
    August 7, 2018
    New England Premiere
    Official Competition
  • Bašta Fest
    Bajina Bašta
    Serbia
    July 5, 2018
    Serbian Premiere
    Official Competition - SPECIAL MENTION FOR CINEMATOGRAPHY
  • Leiden International Short Film Experience
    Leiden
    Netherlands
    May 11, 2018
    Netherlands Premiere
    International Competition
  • Unknown Film Festival
    Yekaterinburg
    Russian Federation
    June 29, 2018
    Russian Premiere
    BRONZE AWARD - Short films competition
  • Shift Film Festival / CineSud
    Maastricht
    Netherlands
    November 16, 2018
    BEST FILM AWARD
  • Beijing International Short Film Festival
    Beijing
    China
    September 14, 2018
    Asian Premiere
    International Competition
  • Still Voices Short Film Festival
    Ballymahon
    Ireland
    August 16, 2018
    Irish Premiere
    Official Selection
  • OIFF Turin Underground Cinefest
    Turin
    Italy
    March 25, 2018
    Italian Premiere
    International Competition
  • Vilnius queer festival "Kreivės"
    Vilnius
    Lithuania
    September 13, 2018
    Lithuanian Premiere
    Official Selection
  • The Palace International Film Festival
    Otmuchov
    Poland
    July 15, 2018
    Polish Premiere
    Official Selection
  • Comme Il Faut International Film Festival
    Minsk
    Belarus
    April 15, 2018
    Belarussian Premiere
    AWARD: Best Video of the Rights of Minorities
  • 18th Mezipatra Queer Film Festival
    Praha, Brno
    Czech Republic
    November 3, 2017
    Czech Premiere
    International Shorts Competition
  • Everybody's Perfect - Geneva International Queer Film Festival
    Genève
    Switzerland
    October 12, 2018
    Swiss Premiere
    Official Selection
  • 20th Brussels Short Film Festival
    Brussels
    Belgium
    April 29, 2017
    Premiere in country of origin
    National Competition
  • Arc Film Festival
    Mainz
    Germany
    April 25, 2019
    International Competition
  • Fringe! Film Fest
    London
    United Kingdom
    November 13, 2018
    UK Premiere
    Official Selection
  • 25th Le Court en Dit Long
    Paris
    France
    June 7, 2017
    French Premiere
    Official Competition
  • The Palace International Film Festival - Bristol Edition
    Bristol
    United Kingdom
    March 14, 2019
    Official Selection
  • Pink Screens Film Festival
    Brussels
    Belgium
    November 16, 2017
    Official Selection
  • Cinhomo International Film Festival – Muestra Internacional Cine LGTBI Valladolid
    Valladolid
    Spain
    April 16, 2018
    International Competition
  • Filmhuis Mechelen - Holebi Film Festival
    Mechelen
    Belgium
    November 27, 2017
  • Still.mov_final / Because we are visual
    Anvers
    Belgium
    May 8, 2018
    Official Selection
  • QFest: The Houston International LGBTQ Film Festival
    Houston
    United States
    July 26, 2019
    Official Selection
  • International Short Film Festival Beveren
    Beveren
    Belgium
    November 23, 2018
    Official Selection
  • Inshort Film Festival 2019
    Lagos
    Nigeria
    December 27, 2018
    Official Selection
  • LGBTQ Shorts Film Festival
    Missoula
    United States
    June 11, 2019
    Official Selection
Distribution Information
  • Tarantula Belgium
    Country: Belgium
    Rights: All Rights
  • Agence Belge du Court Métrage
    Country: Belgium
    Rights: All Rights
Director Biography - Nicolas Graux

Nicolas Graux was born in 1988 in Liège, Belgium. Passionate about film, he graduated from IAD in 2012 with a Master in Film Directing. His graduation film, Boy with the Devil, between fiction and sensory experience, was shown in several festivals across Europe. In 2013, he co-founded the production society Replica, within which he created the video installation The Flat Colony, about a decaying communist fresco. His short fiction film After Dawn (2017), shot in Poland, deals with homosexual desire on the backdrop of a repressive society. After Dawn was selected in more than thirty international film festivals, including Premiers Plans d'Angers, Sarajevo and Palm Springs. In parallel, Nicolas has completed his first long-feature documentary, set in a remote area of Laos plagued by opium, Century of Smoke (2019).

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

At first, a personal story. A love story. The suburbs of a big town in Poland, the grey communist housing blocks, the apartment which was too cramped for the secret it had to hold, the omnipresence of the flatmates, our whispered words behind closed doors. The two of us waking up at dawn on his single bed, to the rays of the sun reflected in the windows of the building across the yard. All this, and more, had become familiar to me during our short-lived love story.

Hiding. Pretending to be ‘the brother of a girl’ he had met in Brussels during his Erasmus trip. Becoming an accessory to the lies he had to tell to justify my presence. Averting my eyes from him in public, being afraid that one burning glance might reveal the nature of our relationship. Behaving as though we were constantly being spied on, even when we were alone... To the point where I stopped noticing how my behaviour had adjusted to his. And always, this melancholy getting at your throat at every turn. A life under the burden of shame. I wouldn’t have believed it, but that shame, which I had initially thought belonged to him only, wasn’t it precisely what I was feeling inside of me as well? The shame of being homosexual?

I’m from a completely different background to his – I’m from Belgium, he’s from Poland. I wasn’t raised in an ultra-conservative family or a society that is largely ruled by catholic values. However, what I was slowly becoming aware of during my time with him, was that the shame had always been part of my life too, deep down. I had just internalized it, then had forgotten about it, the way we forget a dull, nagging pain over time. I remembered something I had read in Gombrowicz’s novel Cosmos: “Shame is strange, contradictory in nature: defending itself against one thing, it draws it to the most intimate and confidential area.”

The love story was over, but my need for the film crystallized from the contradictory feelings it had left in me. What enabled me to liberate all those intimate memories and transcribe them into a piece of fiction, was to choose to tell the story from the point of view of the other, the Polish character, Pawel.

I wanted a film that would be at the same time elusive, elliptical and sparse in terms of dramatization, with free space for interpretation, but also, limited in terms of space and time. The on-screen moments and the gaps between them had to be crafted with the same care. I didn’t rely on any script-writing method, nor on anything I was taught in film school; I would more likely argue that, for me, each film demands its own approach, and it’s something that begins to dawn on you during the writing process. The most important for me was to be in tune with the inner lives and emotions of the characters.