Eden and After (Cennet ve Sonrası)

Eden and After (L'Éden et après) is a 1970 Franco-Czechoslovak surrealist drama written and directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet, a founding figure of the New Novel movement. The film is regarded as the start of his second period, in which he moved from black-and-white experimental works to color films centered on sadomasochism and sexual obsession.

The story follows a group of bored university students who gather at a strange club called Cafe Eden and, led by Violette, pass the time with games rehearsing death and murder; some exterior scenes were shot in Tunisia. Rather than writing a detailed screenplay, Robbe-Grillet built the narrative through a system inspired by Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, which forced him to hire relatively obscure actors. Catherine Jourdan stars, alongside a secondary role for the director's wife, Catherine Robbe-Grillet. The film competed for the Golden Bear at the 20th Berlin International Film Festival and screened at the 24th Istanbul Film Festival in 2005.