Waking Life

‘A young man, in his search for the meaning of life, encounters dozens of people who constantly offer him new explanatory models. He becomes increasingly aware that he himself has left factual reality behind and finds himself in a liminal realm between life and death. But isn’t this ‘dream within a dream’ characteristic of all experiences of reality?’ (Filmdienst)

‘“Cinema is an anti-universe in which reality arises from a sum of unrealities.” (…) This quote, I believe by Jean Epstein, fits this animated film by Richard Linklater perfectly. Waking Life was produced using an innovative animation technique in which video footage is transformed semi-automatically into painted moving images. (…) The film is a succession of paradoxes and reflections on what is real and what is not, on when one is dreaming and when one is awake; and the unusual way in which it is structured seems designed to further complicate all the questions it raises, rather than to resolve them.’ (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader, May 2025)