I was interested in the simple structure of a woman walking through the night, which revealed itself to me through two books—Alice Notley’s The Descent of Alette and Kathy Acker’s Don Quixote. Both are gender-flipped epics about women undertaking long journeys. Kathy’s protagonist has an abortion and embarks on an oneiric quest, while Alice’s is an epic imagined in reverse. It goes down into the subconscious, the interior, rather than up into the rational mind. Alice thought knowledge came from the inside, and said repeatedly that it was a shame we never looked there. My film borrows from her poem structurally, where the subway becomes a metaphor for the unconscious – a portal to deeper realms. My idea was to fill that structure with women talking, to bring in a more choral or collective dimension.
In any grouping, there are bound to be differences. One woman’s liberation can be another woman’s oppression, and vice versa. The fascinating thing about the process, and why [At Night is] a bit of a melancholic film, is that there are things that we just don’t share, bridges between us that are too big, especially at this historical juncture. Maybe that won’t always be the case. — Beatrice Gibson
For the Los Angeles premiere of artist Beatrice Gibson’s feature film debut, AFI Fest 2026 presents At Night, a revelation of discourse among six women across one night in Paris. Featuring Diocouda Diaoune (who cowrote the script), Kátia Belo Cardoso, Sophie Robinson, Amy Gwatkin, Lily Mcmenamy, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Laida Lertxundi—and Gibson in a semifictionalised version of herself—the film’s nocturnal dreamscape deftly situates issues of labor, identity, and freedom.
For At Night, Gibson was awarded the Best Emerging Director Award this year at Locarno. See details and the link below for AFI Fest screening info.
AT NIGHT
Directed by Beatrice Gibson
AFI Fest 2026 Presented by Canva
Sunday, October 25, at 6:40 pm
Chinese 3
6801 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles
Beatrice Gibson’s quotation is from her British Film Institute interview with Sophia Satchell-Baeza, October 6, 2026.
Beatrice Gibson, At Night (2026), from top: Beatrice Gibson; Diocouda Diaoune; At Night scene; Lily Mcmenamy.
Images courtesy and © Beatrice Gibson.
