Screen can reveal the trailer for Anthony Lapia’s After, set to world premiere in Berlin’s Panorama section. 

This French debut feature follows two people who meet at a Parisian techno nightclub before going home together as their different lives and views collide as day approaches. Director Lapia also wrote and produced with his company Société Acéphale alongside Salt For Sugar Films. 

The journey to the Berlinale official selection has been a Cinderella story of sorts for the completely independent collaborative effort five years in the making. After was shot for just $65,000 (€60,000) with no state aid, which is particularly rare in France.

After’s young cast includes 2023 César Revelation Louise Chevillotte (The World After Us), Majd Mastoura (Berlinale 2016 best actor winner for Mohamed Ben Attia’s Hedi) and Natalia Wiszniewska, who is also creative producer on the film. 

“I hope to have succeeded in transmitting my love of partying in its most radical and political sense,” Lapia said of his passion project, adding that: “I always thought that the club was a perfect film space: It’s both an underground hell and a heavenly paradise where everything is possible, a purgatory that allows us to accept the hell that is outside. It is a deeply negative form of utopia, which is very much in the image of our time.”

The film will world premiere in Berlin on February 18 and is still looking for an international sales agent ahead of EFM.

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