Description

The cornerstone of director Richard Linklater’s career-long exploration of cinematic time, this celebrated three-part romance captures a relationship as it begins, begins again, deepens, and strains over the course of almost two decades. Chronicling the love of Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke), from their first meeting as idealistic twentysomethings to the disillusionment they face together in middle age, The Before Trilogy also serves as a document of a boundary-pushing and extraordinarily intimate collaboration between director and actors, as Delpy and Hawke imbue their characters with a sense of lived-in experience, and age on-screen along with them. Attuned to the sweeping grandeur of time’s passage as well as the evanescence of individual moments, the Before films chart the progress of romantic destiny as it navigates the vicissitudes of ordinary life.

Before Sunrise
An exquisitely understated ode to the thrill of romantic possibility, the inaugural installment of The Before Trilogy opens with a chance encounter between two solitary young strangers.

Before Sunset
Impelled by an urgent sense of the transience of human connection, Before Sunset remains Richard Linklater’s most seductive experiment with time’s inexorable passage and the way love can seem to stop it in its tracks.

Before Midnight
The conclusion of The Before Trilogy grapples with the complexities of long-term intimacy, and asks what becomes of love when it has no recourse to its past illusions.

Special Features

• New, restored 2K digital transfers of Before Sunrise and Before Sunset and a 2K digital master of Before Midnight, approved by director Richard Linklater
• New discussion featuring Linklater and actors Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, moderated by critic Kent Jones
• Behind-the-scenes footage and interviews from the productions of Before Sunrise and Before Sunset
• Audio commentary on Before Midnight by Delpy, Linklater, and Hawke
• Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny, a feature-length 2016 documentary by Louis Black and Karen Bernstein
• After Before, a new documentary by Athina Rachel Tsangari about the making of Before Midnight in Greece
• New conversation between scholars Dave Johnson and Rob Stone about Linklater’s work
• Episode of the radio program Fresh Air featuring host Terry Gross, Linklater, Delpy, and Hawke
• Linklater // On Cinema & Time, a 2016 video essay by filmmaker :: kogonada