The Before Trilogy

Films

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). According to Linklater, "her mind [is] a constant stream of confident and intelligent ideas", as they talked about the film's concept and characters; only discussing an outline, the screenplay was written in 11 days. Linklater wished to explore the "relationships of life and discover two people [of] complete anonymity and try to find out who they really were". As a result, he decided on a foreign setting, deciding a person is "more open to experiences outside your realm".

Casting for the first film took nine months; 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. In 2016, Delpy told Creative Screenwriting she and Hawke performed uncredited rewrites, stating "the original screenplay [lacked] romance. It was a lot of talking [and] Richard hired us to bring the romance to the film". Despite not being credited, Delpy claimed that a credit from a relatively unknown actress may have prevented the film from gaining finance. 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:

We sat in a room and worked together in about a two- or three-day period, worked out a very detailed outline of the whole film in this sort of real-time environment. And then, over the next year or so, we just started e-mailing each other and faxing. I was sort of a conduit – they would send me monologues and dialogues and scenes and ideas, and I was editing, compiling and writing. And that's how we came up with a script.

Reception

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." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 79 out of 100 based on 19 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Film critic Roger Ebert gave Before Sunrise three out of four stars and described Julie Delpy as "ravishingly beautiful and, more important, warm and matter-of-fact, speaking English so well the screenplay has to explain it (she spent some time in the States)". 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." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 91 out of 100 based on 39 reviews from mainstream publications, indicating "universal acclaim". The film appeared on 28 critics' top 10 lists of the best films of 2004, 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."

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, and the Writers Guild of America Awards. Delpy was also nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for Before Midnight.