‘I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming’ Wins Ethical Film Award — SkimNews
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- I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming won the Tokyo International Film Festival’s Ethical Film Award, selected from three festival nominees by a jury headed by Isomura Hayato with three members of the festival’s student PR team.
- Ethical Film Award was established in 2023 with Sumitomo Corporation as sponsor and highlights films that shed light on issues including the environment, poverty and discrimination.
- Oleh, a trans man in the Germany-Ukraine co-production, tries to leave Ukraine to escape the coming war but is barred because his documents list his gender; he stays behind with his partner, Olya.
- Isomura Hayato said the jury rated the film highly for taking on gender against the backdrop of the war between Russia and Ukraine, choosing it in the hope viewers would reflect on how people go on living when identity, purpose and values are shaken and denied.
- Isabelle Stever, who could not travel to Tokyo, accepted the award in a video message recorded during a break from teaching at a film school.
- Isabelle Stever said “queer” refers not only to LGBTQ+ but also to something that is not normalized, linking the term to autocratic regimes and Ukrainians fighting “so people can still breathe.”
- Tokyo International Film Festival will send Stever a certificate and a cash prize of ¥200,000 ($1,270) at a later date.
Why it matters: Stever gains a festival certificate and ¥200,000, but the more substantive payoff is visibility for a film the jury said it chose to make viewers reflect on identity under war. The story also broadens queerness beyond LGBTQ+ identity to resistance against normalized authoritarian rules, giving the award a clear cultural focus beyond the film’s Ukraine setting.
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