Before trilogy

Before Sunrise Before Sunrise is set in a single night in Vienna as Jesse, an American student traveling through Europe, and Céline, a French student visiting relatives, meet on a Eurail train to Paris. They wander the streets of Vienna and fall in love, but they go their separate ways and agree to meet again in the future. Before Sunset Before Sunset takes place nine years after the first film, and is set in a single afternoon in Paris. Jesse, now a married father and a best-selling author, meets Céline while on tour promoting his latest book, which retells their meeting in Vienna. They wander Paris and lament on not following through with their plans to reunite. At the end of the film, Jesse goes to Céline's apartment, deciding to miss his flight home to stay with her. Before Midnight Before Midnight takes place nine years after the second film, and is set in a single day on the Peloponnese coast in Greece. Jesse and Céline, now a couple with twin daughters, argue over Jesse's desire to relocate to Chicago to be closer to his son, Hank, while Céline wishes to stay in Paris to take a job with the French government. Despite their relationship being tested, they eventually reconcile. Potential fourth film Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy have discussed continuing the series further, with changing levels of interest. In March 2020, Hawke stated a sequel may likely not follow the precedent of a nine-year gap between films. "If the first three were all nine years apart, the fourth would not follow that trajectory," he said. "[Linklater] would want a different path but we enjoy working together and being together. We have to make sure we have something to say." In June 2021, Delpy said that she had turned down going ahead with a sequel, later clarifying: "All three of us agreed that we couldn't come up with something good for a fourth one". She said that there was some discussion of the direction a fourth film might take, but, "it was basically an idea that none of us liked. That was the end of it. It was half of a bad idea that went around and we were like, ‘Let’s not do it.’" ==Production==

Before Sunrise was inspired by a woman whom Richard Linklater met in a toy shop in Philadelphia in 1989. Due to the prevalence of dialogue, Linklater opted to collaborate on the screenplay with Kim Krizan, who previously appeared in his films Slacker (1990) and Dazed and Confused (1993). as they talked about the film's concept and characters; only discussing an outline, the screenplay was written in 11 days. As a result, he decided on a foreign setting, deciding a person is "more open to experiences outside your realm". originally against casting Ethan Hawke, considering him too young for the part, Linklater hired him after seeing him at a play in New York City. After hiring Julie Delpy, Linklater asked them to read together in Austin, Texas, then deciding they were right for the roles. Delpy and Hawke subsequently received writing credit for the sequels. Linklater considered a larger budget sequel, to be filmed in four locations. His proposal did not secure funding, so he scaled back the concept of the film, with Hawke, Linklater, and Delpy working independently on their own screenplays over the years. They also adapted elements of the earlier scripts for Before Sunrise for the sequel. Linklater described the process of completing the final version of the film as: Hawke said, "It's not like anybody was begging us to make a second film. We obviously did it because we wanted to." It filmed entirely on location in Paris. It opens inside the Shakespeare and Company bookstore on the Left Bank. Other locations include their walking through the Marais district of the 4th arrondissement, Le Pure Café in the 11th arrondissement, the Promenade Plantée park in the 12th arrondissement, on board a bateau mouche from Quai de la Tournelle to Quai Henri IV, the interior of a taxi, and finally "Céline's apartment." Described in the film as located at 10 rue des Petites-Écuries, it was filmed in Cour de l'Étoile d'Or off rue du Faubourg St-Antoine. Filming took 15 days, on a budget of about US$2 million. The film is noted for its use of the Steadicam for tracking shots and its use of long takes; the longest of the Steadicam takes lasts about 11 minutes. Additional comment has noted that both Hawke and Delpy incorporated elements of their own lives into the screenplay. Delpy wrote two of the songs featured in the film, and a third by her was included in the closing credits and film soundtrack. In the subsequent years, Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy had all discussed doing a sequel to Before Sunset (or the third in a trilogy). In November 2011, Hawke said that he, Delpy and Linklater "have been talking a lot in the last six months. All three of us have been having similar feelings, that we're kind of ready to revisit those characters. There's nine years between the first two films and, if we made the film next summer, it would be nine years again, so we started thinking that would be a good thing to do. So we're going to try and write it this year." In June 2012, Hawke confirmed that the sequel to Before Sunset would be filmed that summer. Soon after, Delpy denied filming would take place that year. But by August 2012, numerous reports emerged from Messenia, Greece, that the film was being shot there. The completion of filming the sequel, titled Before Midnight, was announced on September 5, 2012. Linklater said that, after ten weeks of writing and rehearsing, the film was made in fifteen days for less than $3 million. It premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival in January 2013. ==Additional production and crew details==

Box office Critical response Before Sunrise received high critical praise at the time of its release. The review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 100% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 51 reviews, with an average rating of 8.4/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Thought-provoking and beautifully filmed, Before Sunrise is an intelligent, unabashedly romantic look at modern love, led by marvelously natural performances from Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy." In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, "Before Sunrise is as uneven as any marathon conversation might be, combining colorful, disarming insights with periodic lulls. The film maker clearly wants things this way, with both these young characters trying on ideas and attitudes as if they were new clothes". Hal Hinson, in his review for The Washington Post wrote, "Before Sunrise is not a big movie, or one with big ideas, but it is a cut above the banal twentysomething love stories you usually see at the movies. This one, at least, treats young people as real people". Before Sunset received widespread acclaim from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes it hold an approval rating of 94% based on 181 reviews, with an average rating of 8.3/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Filled with engaging dialogue, Before Sunset is a witty, poignant romance, with natural chemistry between Hawke and Delpy." and took the 27th spot on Metacritic's list of The Best-Reviewed Movies of the Decade (2000–09). In comparing this film to the first, American film critic Roger Ebert wrote, "Before Sunrise was a remarkable celebration of the fascination of good dialogue. But Before Sunset is better, perhaps because the characters are older and wiser, perhaps because they have more to lose (or win), and perhaps because Hawke and Delpy wrote the dialogue themselves." In her review for the Los Angeles Times, Manohla Dargis lauded the film as a "deeper, truer work of art than the first," and praised director Linklater for making a film that "keeps faith with American cinema at its finest." Before Midnight also received widespread critical acclaim. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 98% based on reviews from 202 critics, with an average rating of 8.7/10. The site's consensus is: "Building on the first two installments in Richard Linklater's well-crafted Before trilogy, Before Midnight offers intelligent, powerfully acted perspectives on love, marriage, and long-term commitment." According to Rotten Tomatoes, it was the second-best reviewed film of 2013 after Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity. According to Total Films Philip Kemp, "As with its two predecessors — and with the films of French New Wave director Éric Rohmer, presiding deity of this kind of cinema—Midnight's essentially a film about people talking. But when the talk's this good, this absorbing and revealing and witty and true, who's going to complain?... [It's a] more-than-worthy, expectation-exceeding chapter in one of modern cinema's finest love stories. As honest, convincing, funny, intimate and natural as its predecessors." Perry Seibert of AllMovie also praised the film, writing: "The screenwriting trio fill the movie with long, discursive conversations (there are only two scenes in the first 20 minutes) that feel utterly improvised when they are performed, but are far too deftly structured to be anything other than the work of consummate artists." Eric Kohn, from Indiewire, gave the film a rave review, adding it to his list of Top 10 Films of 2013. He wrote that "With Before Midnight, Richard Linklater has completed one of the finest movie trilogies of all time." In 2021, The Independent ranked the Before Trilogy third on its list of "10 greatest movie trilogies of all time". Accolades The trilogy received numerous accolades. Linklater won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 1995 Berlin International Film Festival for Before Sunrise. In 2025, the film was selected by the National Film Preservation Board for preservation in the United States Library of Congress's National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Before Sunset and Before Midnight were both nominated for the Bodil Award for Best English Language Film, the Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Feature, the Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Picture, and the Silver Condor Award for Best Foreign Film. Their screenplays received nominations at the Academy Awards, the Film Independent Spirit Awards, the Online Film Critics Society Awards, Delpy was also nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for Before Midnight. == Explanatory notes==