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

Magnolia

Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
188 min

This deeply personal 1999 California opus is ripe for rediscovery. Mapping the emotional traumas of half-a-dozen major characters as they crisscross the San Fernando Valley in search of either recognition or reconciliation, it's PTA's riskiest gamble.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Ravenous

Dir. Antonia Bird
100 min

This black comic horror western has a troubled production (no less than three directors) but it's a grisly, atmospheric treat (if cannibalism is your thing). Guy Pearce and Robert Carlyle lead the way.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Office Space

Dir. Mike Judge
90 min

This razor sharp comedy from Mike Judge (King of the Hill) captures the indignities of life as a wage slave with rare acumen and caustic wit. Evidently the impending millennial bug weighed heavily on people's minds back in 1999.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

American Doctor

Dir. Poh Si Teng
93 min

One of the most powerful documentaries of the year, this puts us smack in the open wound that is Gaza, filtered through the eyes of three American surgeons (of Palestinian, Jewish and Zoroastrian backgrounds) compelled to do their utmost to alleviate harm.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Fight Club

Dir. David Fincher
139 min

1999 was a very good year for movies, but nothing captured millennial angst quite so vividly as David Fincher's bruising black comedy about what it means to be a man today. This modern classic does everything short of rattling your seat to get a reaction.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

The Wind Will Carry Us

Dir. Abbas Kiarostami
118 min

Kiarostami's dry comic masterpiece follows a Tehrani film team's thwarted attempts to document a traditional Kurdish funeral... Trouble being, there's no one to bury, and, worse, virtually no cell service...

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre