Waking Life

Waking Life (2001) is an American animated drama directed by Richard Linklater that you can watch online on iFILM. Shot on digital video and then hand-painted frame by frame using rotoscoping, the film has a shimmering, liquid visual quality unlike anything else in American independent cinema.

A young man (Wiley Wiggins) drifts through an unbroken chain of dreams. Each stop brings a new conversation: philosophers, street preachers, neuroscientists, a man on a rooftop who talks about the gap between dreaming and waking. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy appear briefly, picking up the thread of their Before Sunrise characters nine years on. The protagonist keeps waking up — only to find himself inside another layer of dream.

Waking Life premiered at Sundance in 2001 and drew wide critical praise for the rare feat of making existential questions — free will, reality, consciousness — feel genuinely cinematic rather than academic. Tagline: "Dreams. What are they? An escape from reality or reality itself?" Stream Waking Life (2001) online on iFILM.