Drake Doremus says he went to Madrid on a nine-day trip and stayed five months after meeting the woman who became his wife — an accidental detour that reset the director’s life and the story at the center of his return. "I was even thinking about doing something else completely and not making movies anymore. But then I met my wife by chance in Madrid, and we ended up moving to London, I realized that there are so many little decisions in life that add up to giant changes," he told reporters as Next Life arrived at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Next Life, Doremus’ first feature in seven years, premieres at Tribeca today. The film stars Emilia Clarke — who also serves as a producer through her Magical Thinking Pictures banner — as Ivy, a woman whose life forks into two alternate realities. Edgar Ramírez plays Diego, a jazz musician, and Jack Farthing appears as Noah, Ivy’s ex; the picture runs 1 hour 52 minutes and is set against the modern London jazz scene, with music threaded through both versions of Ivy’s life.
The film’s premise is simple and personal: Ivy is confronted with parallel universes where one life follows music and a new romance with Diego, and the other finds her rekindling a relationship with Noah. "I thought about how quickly my life had changed overnight and how, at the end of the day, there’s all these parallel universes with different versions of ourselves all chasing different dreams and different things, in and out of love, and this kaleidoscopic life that is just constantly moving and changing," Doremus said, describing how his own experience inspired the film’s structure.
Doremus traces Next Life directly to that Madrid chapter: after meeting his future wife during the pandemic he left Los Angeles, relocated to London and began shaping a story about the small choices that accumulate into major shifts. The project reunites him with producers including Elika Portnoy of Mutressa, Gleb Fetisov of Fetisoff Illusion, and Ben Pugh and Kate Buckley of 42; CAA Media Finance is handling domestic rights, Rocket Science represents international sales, and Vertigo Releasing has acquired the film for the U.K. and Ireland.
Clarke’s Ivy sits at the film’s emotional center, and her dual role as lead and producer is part of what brought the project to life. The narrative folds intimate questions about fate and love into a jazz-inflected London setting; Doremus has framed the movie as a personal second act after a period of doubt. "Like a lot of artists during the pandemic, I lost my way and was trying to figure out what I had to say, if anything anymore," he said. "I was going through a lot of self-doubt, and I now feel like the second act has restarted and I’m grateful to be doing it again."
Not everyone found the thought experiment as messy as real life. A review in a trade publication described Next Life as a 'Sliding Doors'-style drama and suggested the film’s thought experiment is "too tidy to provoke much feeling," a critique that sits uneasily beside Doremus’ stated aim of plumbing small decisions for their emotional weight. That tension — between a clean narrative mechanism and the messy consequences Doremus says inspired it — will be one of the clearest things audiences in Tribeca theaters are weighing.
What happens next is plainly audience-driven: the film’s Tribeca screenings will be the first real measure of whether Clarke’s lead turn and Doremus’ personal reset cohere for viewers after a seven-year absence. Release plans beyond festival play remain anchored to the festival response and the existing sales deals; for Doremus, who left Los Angeles for London and has returned to feature filmmaking with this personal material, Tribeca is where he and his collaborators will find out if their gamble resonates.
