Das geträumte Abenteuer / Życie snem
2026, 167 min.

pre-premiere screening

Awards and selections: Cannes Film Festival 2026 – Jury Prize, Oscars 2027 – Bulgarian contender for the Best International Feature Film nomination
Director: Valeska Grisebach
Cast: Yana Radeva, Syuleyman Alilov Letifov, Stoicho Kostadinov, Nikolay Shekerdjiev
Country: Germany, France, Bulgaria, Austria

[IN-PERSON SCREENING]

The boundary between dream and reality has never been thinner.

In a dusty, mountainous region on the border between Bulgaria and Turkey, rival smuggling groups fight for control. Saïd, a petty criminal making a living smuggling fuel, meets archaeologist Veska again after many years. Their shared past becomes entangled with local conflicts, mysterious disappearances and legends whose truth is difficult to establish. “The Dreamed Adventure” is a hypnotic, slow-burning story set in a world governed by its own rules. Valeska Grisebach blurs the boundaries between reality, memory and myth, creating a film with an elusive atmosphere and ever-changing rules of the game.

In the media:

«This story simply flows, flows through the Bulgarian landscape… A fascinating, ambiguous portrait of the borderlands, small-town swampiness and a journey following traces of the past. Grisebach makes films rarely, but she always comes back with something substantial.»
— Wojciech Tutaj, capsule review, Filmweb

«”The Dreamed Adventure” is an excellent example of cinema built from the ground up. German director Valeska Grisebach returns to the borderlands of southern Bulgaria, nine years after the acclaimed “Western” (2017), to tell a story that is at once starkly realistic and otherworldly. This raw, unpredictable tale of an archaeologist who returns to her native region to lead an excavation, discovering far more than fragments of pottery and old coins along the way, clearly belongs to the present while also being steeped in the many stories of this border town. The place exists in an uncertain transit zone, where Europe ends – or begins.»
— Lee Marshall, ScreenDaily, read the full review

Valeska Grisebach

German director and screenwriter, and one of the most compelling voices in contemporary European cinema. Her films, acclaimed for their realist style and distinctive atmosphere, often focus on human relationships and tensions lurking beneath seemingly ordinary reality. She gained international recognition with films including “Western” (2017) and “The Dreamed Adventure”, which received the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Tags: mystery, smuggling, borderlands, crime