British filmmaker and artist Beatrice Gibson’s feature debut, At Night, follows six women moving through neon-lit Paris over one night as reality, dreams and fiction overlap. The experimental, “autofictional” film explores conversations about desire, money, motherhood and mental health, presenting intimate experiences that women may share privately but seldom publicly.

The film will have its world premiere in Locarno’s Filmmakers of the Present competition on 8 August during the festival’s 79th edition, running from 5 to 15 August. Written and directed by Gibson, it features non-professional actors drawn from her friends and influences, cinematography by Ben Rivers and editing by Liyo Gong; it also includes a poem recorded by US poet Alice Notley shortly before her death in 2025. Gibson drew inspiration from feminist reworkings of quest narratives and uses the women’s nocturnal journeys to consider who occupies cities at night and the undervalued labour that keeps them functioning.