Is the Before Trilogy based on a true story? Details explored

Watching the Before trilogy feels a little like stumbling into someone else’s diary, unguarded, intimate, and almost too honest for fiction. The conversations feel unscripted, the silences too loaded, the chemistry too specific. Protagonists Jesse and Céline don’t just talk, they crash, trip over thoughts, and change their minds mid-sentence. It’s messy. It’s magnetic. It’s real. And it makes you wonder: did this actually happen?

In a way, yes.

Richard Linklater based Before Sunrise on a single night he once spent wandering Philadelphia with a stranger. They talked. They connected. And then, like in the film, they parted ways. No epic declarations, no grand gestures, just a shared slice of time that haunted him quietly enough to turn into art. It wasn’t love, necessarily. But it mattered. And that was enough.

But the magic of the Before trilogy isn’t just Linklater’s story. It’s what Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke poured their voices, their ideas, and their hearts into. They helped shape Céline and Jesse over nearly two decades. They aged with them. They broke and bloomed alongside them.

So, is the story true? Not entirely. But is it real? Completely. And maybe that’s what makes it unforgettable.

What, or rather, who, inspired the Before Trilogy?

Still from Before Midnight (Image via YouTube/@Sony Pictures Classics)

Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy is a love letter to a moment, a memory, a maybe. Three films span across eighteen years, following two strangers who once stepped off a train together and changed each other’s lives, not through grand gestures or sweeping drama, but through conversation, laughter, and the quiet ache of time passing.

What many don’t know is that Jesse and Celine’s story began with Linklater’s own night of wandering. In 1989, while briefly in Philadelphia, he met a young woman named Amy Lehrhaupt at a toy store. They were strangers, but something clicked, the kind of thing that doesn’t happen every day, or maybe only once in a lifetime. They spent the whole night walking and talking, from midnight to dawn, brushing against everything and nothing, the way people do when they know time is short.

Linklater was already a filmmaker, and even in that moment, a part of him whispered, “This could be a movie”( Spoiler alert: he made it into one). The way the night unfolded, not in terms of what happened, but how it felt, stuck with him. So years later, he turned that feeling into Before Sunrise, and then returned to Jesse and Celine’s world again in Before Sunset and Before Midnight, thus developing the Before trilogy.

Talking about their relationship, the director has said,

“We ended up spending the night walking around, flirting, doing things you would never do now. I was at that stage in life where I was open, so we just walked and got to know each other,”

But the real-life story didn’t end the way the Before trilogy did. Linklater and Lehrhaupt tried to stay in touch, but as with most real romances, the connection faded. He later admitted he hoped she’d somehow hear about the film, recognize herself, and reach out. But life isn’t a film. By the time Before Sunrise was being filmed in 1994, Amy Lehrhaupt had already died in a motorcycle accident. She never got to see the story she inspired.

Linklater didn’t learn this until years later. But in a way, the Before trilogy became his way of keeping her alive. Celine showing up at Jesse’s reading of Before Sunset was his imagined what-if. The Before trilogy's slow, tender pacing, its resistance to plot, its long takes and raw dialogue, all of it mirrors that night in Philadelphia. And when Before Midnight finally rolled its credits, one name appeared in quiet tribute: Amy Lehrhaupt. The girl he met once and never forgot. The girl who became cinema.

What happens in all the Before Trilogy films?

The Before trilogy traces a love story in three stolen moments, each separated by nine years. In Before Sunrise, Jesse and Celine have a chance meeting on a train and decide to spend one night wandering Vienna, hearts open and time fleeting. In Before Sunset, they reunite in Paris, older and wearier, but the connection is still electric, asking quietly, what if? Then comes Before Midnight, where they’ve built a life together, now weathered by time, kids, and compromise. It’s no longer about falling in love, but choosing to be in it. Together, the Before trilogy charts love’s arc, from spark to ache to endurance.

Before Sunrise (1995)

Vienna, 1995. Jesse and Celine are just two strangers on a train, but something clicks. In a split-second decision, they get off together and wander the night. No phones, no safety nets, just curiosity and that wild, electric feeling. They walk, talk, and fall into something wordless and weightless. It’s not about sex either. It’s about stories, childhood fears, the idea of reincarnation, and how no one really knows what they’re doing. They promise to meet again in six months. No contact info. No guarantees. Just hope. It’s heartbreakingly naive, and that’s what makes it magical.

Before Sunset (2004)

Paris, 2004. Nine years later, Jesse writes a book about that night. Celine shows up. They’re older, quieter, carrying the weight of lives that happened without each other. Now they’ve got jobs, lovers, and regrets. But that same spark flares up in the middle of Parisian streets and quiet cafés. The city feels like a second chance at love. But the conversation is different now, it’s rushed, and pulsating with all the things they didn’t say nine years ago. It’s about time, disappointment, and the versions of themselves that never got to exist. When the film ends, it’s a "maybe again," but this time, it feels like they might not let go.

Before Midnight (2013)

Greece, 2013. They made it. Sort of. Jesse and Celine have built a life. They’re parents. They’re partners. But now, love looks like compromise and confrontation. It’s raw. They fight like people who know exactly where to land the blow. And yet, there’s still tenderness under the cracks. Before Midnight is the harshest of the Before trilogy, but it’s the most honest one. It shows what happens after the credits roll, when the sparks die down and life kicks in. It asks: What does staying in love really look like?

The Before trilogy isn’t about drama or spectacle. It’s about how people change, and how love can feel different every decade. It’s about conversation as a connection, silence as an intimacy. Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy don’t give us a fairy tale; they give us something truer. Love that falters. Love that lingers. Love that remembers who you were when you first met and forgives who you eventually become.