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.
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Nicolas GrauxDirectorBoy with the Devil (short)
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Nicolas GrauxWriterBoy with the Devil (short)
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Thomas MeysProducer
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Piotr BiedronKey Cast"Pawel"
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Tijmen GovaertsKey Cast"Clément"
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Izabela GwizdakKey Cast"Martyna"
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Lydia IndjovaKey Cast"Ewa"
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Lenka FillnerovaEditing
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Thomas SchiraCinematography
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Project Title (Original Language):Passée l'aube
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Project Type:Short
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Runtime:24 minutes 9 seconds
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Completion Date:January 1, 2017
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Production Budget:60,000 EUR
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Country of Origin:Belgium
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Country of Filming:Poland
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Language:English, Polish
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Shooting Format:Black Magic HD
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Aspect Ratio:4:3
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:No
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30th Festival Premiers Plans d'AngersAngers
France
January 12, 2018
European Short Films Competition -
Mecal Pro 2018Barcelona
Spain
March 1, 2018
Spanish Premiere
International Competition -
24th Palm Springs International Short Film FestivalPalm Springs
United States
June 19, 2018
US Premiere
International Competition -
23rd Sarajevo Film FestivalSarajevo
Bosnia and Herzegovina
August 11, 2017
International Premiere
European Shorts Competition -
TiSFF - Thess International Short Film Festival - International CompetitionThessaloniki
Greece
December 14, 2017
Greece Premiere
CINEMATIC ACHIEVEMENT AWARD -
32nd Festival International du Film Francophone - National CompetitionNamur
Belgium
October 1, 2017
BEST ACTING PRIZE : Piotr Biedron & Tijmen Govaerts -
Travelling Film FestivalRennes
France
February 20, 2018
Short Films Competition -
Cellu l'art Short Film Festival JenaJena
Germany
April 26, 2018
German Premiere
Queer Shorts Programme -
ONE SHOT 16th International Short Film FestivalYerevan
Armenia
June 4, 2018
Armenian Premiere
Official Selection -
Friss Hús Budapest International Short Film FestivalBudapest
Hungary
April 3, 2018
Hungarian Premiere
LGBT programme -
WIZ-ART Lviv International Short Film FestivalLviv
Ukraine
August 11, 2018
Ukrainian Premiere
International Competition -
Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film FestivalRhode Island
United States
August 7, 2018
New England Premiere
Official Competition -
Bašta FestBajina Bašta
Serbia
July 5, 2018
Serbian Premiere
Official Competition - SPECIAL MENTION FOR CINEMATOGRAPHY -
Leiden International Short Film ExperienceLeiden
Netherlands
May 11, 2018
Netherlands Premiere
International Competition -
Unknown Film FestivalYekaterinburg
Russian Federation
June 29, 2018
Russian Premiere
BRONZE AWARD - Short films competition -
Shift Film Festival / CineSudMaastricht
Netherlands
November 16, 2018
BEST FILM AWARD -
Beijing International Short Film FestivalBeijing
China
September 14, 2018
Asian Premiere
International Competition -
Still Voices Short Film FestivalBallymahon
Ireland
August 16, 2018
Irish Premiere
Official Selection -
OIFF Turin Underground CinefestTurin
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 FestivalOtmuchov
Poland
July 15, 2018
Polish Premiere
Official Selection -
Comme Il Faut International Film FestivalMinsk
Belarus
April 15, 2018
Belarussian Premiere
AWARD: Best Video of the Rights of Minorities -
18th Mezipatra Queer Film FestivalPraha, Brno
Czech Republic
November 3, 2017
Czech Premiere
International Shorts Competition -
Everybody's Perfect - Geneva International Queer Film FestivalGenève
Switzerland
October 12, 2018
Swiss Premiere
Official Selection -
20th Brussels Short Film FestivalBrussels
Belgium
April 29, 2017
Premiere in country of origin
National Competition -
Arc Film FestivalMainz
Germany
April 25, 2019
International Competition -
Fringe! Film FestLondon
United Kingdom
November 13, 2018
UK Premiere
Official Selection -
25th Le Court en Dit LongParis
France
June 7, 2017
French Premiere
Official Competition -
The Palace International Film Festival - Bristol EditionBristol
United Kingdom
March 14, 2019
Official Selection -
Pink Screens Film FestivalBrussels
Belgium
November 16, 2017
Official Selection -
Cinhomo International Film Festival – Muestra Internacional Cine LGTBI ValladolidValladolid
Spain
April 16, 2018
International Competition -
Filmhuis Mechelen - Holebi Film FestivalMechelen
Belgium
November 27, 2017 -
Still.mov_final / Because we are visualAnvers
Belgium
May 8, 2018
Official Selection -
QFest: The Houston International LGBTQ Film FestivalHouston
United States
July 26, 2019
Official Selection -
International Short Film Festival BeverenBeveren
Belgium
November 23, 2018
Official Selection -
Inshort Film Festival 2019Lagos
Nigeria
December 27, 2018
Official Selection -
LGBTQ Shorts Film FestivalMissoula
United States
June 11, 2019
Official Selection
Distribution Information
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Tarantula BelgiumCountry: BelgiumRights: All Rights
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Agence Belge du Court MétrageCountry: BelgiumRights: All Rights
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).
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.