There’s a scene near the end of Before Sunrise where Jesse and Céline are lying in a park at dawn, barely talking, just existing together before they have to go. Nothing happens. No plot. No stakes, really. And yet I’ve thought about that scene more than almost any other in cinema.
I was fifteen when I first watched it. At that age, most of the people around me were focused on getting or keeping a girlfriend. The emotional vocabulary just wasn’t there yet, mine included. But something about watching these two people talk to each other, really talk, pulled me in completely. I couldn’t name what I was seeing. I just knew I’d never seen anything like it.
Richard Linklater once said: “If cinema was a painting, time would be the paint itself.”
Most directors treat time as a container. You have 90 minutes, fill it. Linklater treats time as the medium. The thing you’re actually working with.
The Before trilogy: Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), Before Midnight (2013), was shot over nearly 18 years with the same two actors. Each film is set in real-time, roughly the length of the film itself. You’re not watching a story about Jesse and Céline. You’re watching Jesse and Céline age. You’re watching a relationship accumulate depth. The films don’t explain what happened in the gaps. Life happened. You can feel it.
I stumbled onto Before Sunset years after it came out. 2008. I had no idea there was a sequel. The fifteen-year-old in me was instantly alive again.
Then came Boyhood. Filmed over 12 actual years, same cast, same boy growing up on screen. Not a child actor followed by an adult actor. The same person, year after year, visibly changing.
No one does this. It’s almost categorically different from how cinema works.
What drew me to Linklater wasn’t just the craft. It was the philosophy underneath it. He believes that ordinary moments… conversations, silences, the texture of a particular day… they’re worth preserving on film. That drama doesn’t need car crashes. That time itself, if you’re patient enough to capture it honestly, is the most dramatic thing of all.
That stays with you. Or it stayed with me.
It shaped what I look for in creative work generally. Does this trust the audience? Does this treat time as something worth attending to? Is it trying to manufacture emotion or earn it?
So when I came across Aditya Kripalani and spent time understanding his work and his vision, something clicked in a way I wasn’t expecting.
Turns out he’s also a Linklater fan. He’s even made a film directly inspired by him. His approach to storytelling is intimate, character-driven, willing to let a scene breathe, and it felt familiar in the best possible way. Like recognising a sensibility you share without having named it.
Some time ago, I decided to get involved in his latest project.
The timing mattered more than I’ve let on.
For the first time since I started working at 23, I had space. Real space… not the kind you squeeze between meetings, but actual, extended, unstructured time. It turned out to be more than reflection. I spent those months taking stock of who I was and quietly rebuilding. And in that kind of quiet, things you’ve always wanted but never chased start to feel possible. Not reckless. Just reachable.
Cinema is a craft I’ve cared about my whole life. At its core, it’s about people and their stories. And that’s always been where I find the richness in life. The experiences that stay with you aren’t the grand events. They’re the conversations, the silences, the small moments that quietly change you. The little details in the world around you that get lodged in memory. The way someone said your name. How pleasantly spicy a handwash smelled, and how it lingered on your hand the rest of the day. The quality of light on a particular afternoon.
Cinema, at its best, is the only art form that can actually hold all of that. I’d just never imagined a way in. And then one appeared.
It wasn’t a calculated career move. I’m not pivoting to the film industry. I’ve spent my career in product and technology, and that’s where most of my energy goes.
But this felt like a door I’d never thought to knock on, and suddenly it was open. A decade-long friendship made that possible. Some doors don’t appear out of nowhere. Someone you trust holds them open for you.
What I wanted was proximity. I wanted to be close enough to see how a film actually gets made. The project management of it. The gaps between vision and execution, and how a director navigates them. How you get a performance out of an actor on a difficult day. How creative problems get solved with no budget and no time. The unglamorous, operational, deeply human work of making something from nothing. That’s the learning I’m after.
I wish I’d been involved from the very beginning. But a foot in the door is still a foot in the door.
Linklater’s characters grow across decades of real time. And here I am, starting something new in a domain I know almost nothing about, with no idea where it goes.
That feels right, actually.
The first step is just to walk through the door. See what’s on the other side. Get better at knowing what questions to ask. And when the next project comes (and I hope one does), go in a little less ignorant, a little more useful.
Cinema that spans decades starts with a single scene in a park at dawn.
I’m just glad I finally asked to be in the room.