Skip to main content
Dream Team film image; man looking at a woman while she looks away

Dream Team

Altered States

This event has passed

Canadian Premiere

Two sexy Interpol agents: No St. Aubergine (Esther Garrel, Call Me By Your Name) and Chase National (Alex Zhang Hungtai, formerly of Vancouver’s Dirty Beaches) travel to Mexico to investigate a conspiracy involving deadly, poisonous gas-emitting coral. Dream Team is a bizarro homage to 90s basic cable television; a bleary-eyed binge-watch of a six-episode season that unfolds like a horny, fever dream complete with trippy, ever-changing title sequences and educational passages about the nature of coral.

Directors Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn have developed their brand of lo-fi, art house camp since the mid-aughts. They return here with another absurdist experiment in genre filmmaking; a neon-soaked VHS aesthetic that is equal parts comforting and uncanny. Not your average movie, Dream Team is a disorienting, post-modern, eco-espionage sitcom broadcast from another world; X-Files meets The Pink Opaque by way of Tim and Eric.

 

Supported by

Media Partner

Community Partner

Directors
Cast

Esther Garrel, Alex Zhang Hungtai, Isabelle Barbier, Fariha Roisin, Minh T Mia, John Fell Ryan

Credits
Country of Origin

USA

Year

2024

Language

English

Film Contact
Links
19+
91 min
Comedy Experimental & Avant Garde Horror & Thriller Women Directors
Smudge Films

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Credits & Director

Executive Producer

Blake Horn, Jane Schoenbrun, Pierce Varous, Sarah Winshall

Producer

Lev Kalman

Screenwriter

Lev Kalman, Whitney Horn

Cinematography

Whitney Horn

Editor

Lev Kalman, Whitney Horn

Production Design

Whitney Horn

Original Music

John Atkinson

Lev Kalman headshot; Dream Team director

Lev Kalman

Whitney Horn headshot; Dream Team director

Whitney Horn

Lev Kalman (b. 1982) and Whitney Horn (b. 1982) have been making films together since 2003. Their distinctive style blends lo-fi 16mm photography, dreamy electronic music, philosophical musings, and steady bursts of absurdist humor. Their films Blondes in the Jungle (2009), L for Leisure (2014), and Two Plains & a Fancy (2018) have played at international festivals including Rotterdam, BFI London, and BAMCinemaFest. Kalman is based in San Diego and Horn in San Francsico.

Filmography: Blondes in the Jungle (2009); L for Leisure (2014); Two Plains & a Fancy (2018)

Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre

All the Lovers in the Night
All the Lovers in the Night film image; man and woman touching the backs of their hands together

All the Lovers in the Night

Dir. Yukiko Sode
139 min

A lonely proofreader's isolated world begins to open through an unlikely friendship with a gentle physics teacher. Based on Mieko Kawakami's acclaimed novel, this luminous drama is a delicate meditation on loneliness, intimacy, and self-discovery.

Lindsay Family Stage at Granville Island International Village 9 Fifth Avenue Cinema - 19+ only International Village 10
Clarissa
Clarissa film image; a woman peering out an open door

Clarissa

Dir. Arie Esiri, Chuko Esiri
134 min

Arie and Chuko Esiri’s Clarissa brings Mrs. Dalloway to present-day Lagos, with Sophie Okonedo playing the titular society hostess opposite David Oyelowo, Ayo Edebiri, and India Amarteifio in a Nigerian vision of class, privilege, and past lives.

Image: © Courtesy of Elevation Pictures

Fifth Avenue Cinema - 19+ only The Park Theatre

Opening Gala: The Debut

Dir. Jesse Eisenberg
150 min

VIFF is honoured to open the festival with this special by-invitation screening of Jesse Eisenberg's The Debut. When meek Mona (Julianne Moore) lands a part in a musical, she fully inhabits her character, but grows increasingly untethered from reality.

Vancouver Playhouse

Árru

Dir. Elle Sofe Sara
95 min

Set against the mountains and fjords of northern Norway, Árru follows reindeer herder Maia as a proposed copper mine threatens her Sámi community, forcing her to fight to protect both her community and the land that sustains it.

SFU Woodwards Lindsay Family Stage at Granville Island Fifth Avenue Cinema - 19+ only
The Beloved
The Beloved film image; two people walking through the desert

The Beloved

Dir. Rodrigo Sorogoyen
135 min

When Esteban Martínez, an acclaimed director with violent tendences, invites his estranged daughter to star in his latest project, the stage is set for a familial reconnection. But as tensions flare, questions about his intentions rise to the surface.

The Rio Theatre The Park Theatre Vancouver Playhouse
MODES 1
Golden Island film image; man standing next to a structure in some water

MODES 1

115 min

Archive and the land reveal other ways of seeing, ensuring that what is meant to endure cannot be erased.

The Cinematheque International Village 8