Before/After (Avant/Après), French-Estonian writer, director and actor Manoël Dupont’s debut feature about two men who bond over their baldness and travel to Istanbul for a hair transplant surgery, will world premiere in the Proxima Competition of the 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) next month.
The film is about Jérémy and Baptiste. “Their shared baldness takes them to Istanbul, where clinics claim to reverse the course of time,” reads a plot description for the film. “Amid shifting winds and silent unrest, they search for meaning in a city not their own. Day by day, a fragile bond forms, in the hope of change.”
Before/After was written and directed by Dupont and produced by Boris Baum and Clara Brandt for Brussels-based production company Les Films de la Récré. Paris- and Marseille-based Outplay Films is handling sales on the movie.
“The idea of transformation is at the heart of Before/After (Avant/Après),” explains Dupont. “What marks change? When do we say that something has truly happened — and why? What first intrigued me was the transplant itself. It’s such a simple act: nothing is added, only moved. One hair follicle is taken from here and implanted there. It’s not addition, it’s displacement — and that alone is enough to create change.”
Continued the filmmaker: “That idea guided me narratively as well. I’m not interested in separating reality from fiction — I want them to nourish and echo each other. With Jérémy and Baptiste, we built the characters’ past together. It gave us a quiet foundation, something we could lean on without locking anything in.”
A KVIFF synopsis highlights that the movie “gently explores the themes of queer identity, vulnerability and human intimacy,” adding that “the pair’s meanders through the Turkish metropolis heighten the atmosphere of the quest – namely the search for beauty in things that aren’t perfect.”
The trailer shows leads Baptiste Leclere and Jérémy Lamblot visiting a clinic, but especially talking to each other, including with foam on their heads, and bantering, including about the risk of ending up with “shitty hair.”
Dupont concluded: “They are a great comic duo, full of irony, which definitely also shaped the film’s story and tone along the way.”
Watch the trailer for Before/After below.