AFTER THE ACT
A devastating meditation on love and intimacy, unfolding over 24 hours as three friends face the quiet wreckage of their choices.
Theatrical Release
Admiral Kino Vienna, Dec 3rd, 8pm — tickets now on sale Sputnik Kino Berlin — Dec 9th, 7pmEclipse Cinema, Melbourne Australia — Dec 11th to 17thDirector’s Statement
After The Act lingers in the aftermath of love and desire. Where connection is both sustaining and suffocating, and where every gesture has the weight of consequence.
Our storytelling approach is deeply rooted in the traditions of art house and slow cinema. We find inspiration from Éric Rohmer’s observational intimacy, Hong Sang-soo’s elliptical honesty, and the raw, lived-in immediacy of Berlin mumblecore. Just as in life, silence, pauses, and the seemingly mundane are given as much space as declarations of passion. Our belief is that cinema is most alive and impactful when it resists easy answers, when it allows the audience to witness rather than be told.
Improvisation is at the heart of our process. In the spirit of Mike Leigh and Joe Swanberg, we work from outlines rather than scripts, inviting our actors to shape dialogue through guided improvisation. This method creates a raw authenticity, moments that feel unrepeatable, alive, and unscripted. For us, cinema is not about control but about trust; trusting our actors, trusting the moment, and trusting the audience to lean into the ambiguity.
Our fascination with both monogamous and open relationships has long been a through line in our work. As partners in life and co-directors, we are intrigued by the contradictions of love: that it can exist without lust, that lust can burn without love, and that intimacy is rarely tidy.
After the Act emerged organically from this exploration, evolving out of our improvised short Goose & Gander (2021), which ended on a question: what happens next? After The Act is our attempt to follow that thread, to sit with the discomfort of not knowing, and to explore the fallout of choices people make in the pursuit of connection.
Over the years, we’ve refined an unconventional filmmaking method that strips away the machinery of traditional production. With Friends, Foes & Fireworks (2018), our feature shot in a single night, we discovered a freedom in pairing cinema back to its essentials: six actors, two cameras, and the courage to embrace imperfection. That spirit continues here. We keep our sets intimate, our crews lean, and our attention fixed on the emotional truth unfolding in front of us.
After the Act is our fifth improvised feature in as many years, and it represents the culmination of an ongoing experiment: to make films that feel lived, not manufactured; films that carry the spontaneity of life itself. In embracing the unconventional, we find honesty. And in that honesty, we hope audiences discover themselves reflected—messy, complicated, human.
— Sarah Jayne Portelli & Ivan Malekin
Cast
Jacob Wolf Lefton is a non-binary male actor, writer and director from the United States. His rich and varied path in the performing arts started in his youth with theater, improvisation and theatrical roleplay.
Through the years he has studied storytelling, theater, commedia dell'arte, and circus arts. He completed a two-year intensive program and teacher training at the Michael Chekhov International Academy in Berlin.
He continues to act and improvise on film and stage while developing his own experimental formats and creative works.
Laura Petracco is a Brazilian-Italian actor who started her path in the performing arts world at the age of nine dancing ballet and singing at the local Choir group in PatrocÃnio where she was born. A few years later she joined the Co. Maxima de teatro, where she had the opportunity to learn more about acting as well as travel and perform in multiple theatre Festivals around Brazil.
Later she moved to Ireland where she took a part-time acting course at the Gaiety School of Acting and joined the Actors Workshop in Dublin. She recently graduate from the Vienna English Theatre academy where she received classical training, performing in Shakespeare and original ensemble based shows. Currently she is part of the Spanish Theatre association in Vienna, Soles del Sur.
Laura Petracco
Jacob Wolf Lefton
Jessica Sy is a state-approved actress, born in Munich. She spent her first months of life with her parents in Jamaica, her father's country of origin.
Jessica Sy starred in the film Survival in Brandenburg (dir. Zoltan Paul) and has appeared on ZDF as a detective on the German series Aktenzeichen XY. Her first international advertising campaign took Jessica to Estonia under the direction of director Bugsy Steel.
On stage, Jessica most recently worked for the Residenztheater in Munich in a play called The Promised Land and she is in the ensemble of The Mediterranean Monologues touring throughout Germany.
Jessica Sy
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