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

Memory of Princess Mumbi

Dir. Damien Hauser
80 min

In 2093, a filmmaker arrives in the African village of Umata, where he meets Princess Mumbi, a woman torn between love, legacy, and the future of storytelling. It's a fabulous genre-blending fable about memory, invention and cinematic resistance.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Late Fame

Dir. Kent Jones
96 min

Based on a novella by Arthur Schnitzler (Eyes Wide Shut) this is a sly, poignant comedy about vanity and art from director Kent Jones, starring Willem Dafoe as a mailman belatedly acclaimed for a book of poetry he wrote in his youth.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World

Dir. Sasha Waters
91 min

Sasha Waters' documentary takes us through the life of America's best-selling late twentieth century poet, a private woman who shared her innermost thoughts and made them indispensable.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Rosetta

Dir. Luc Dardenne, Jean-Pierre Dardenne
93 min

A teenager tries to change her dire circumstances in this overwhelming naturalistic drama from the Dardenne brothers, winner of the Palme d'Or and Best Actress awards at Cannes, 1999.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Searching for Satyrus

Dir. Rena Effendi
101 min

Award-winning filmmaker and photographer Rena Effendi embarks on a quest to track down the very rare Satyrus Effendi, a butterfly discovered by her father in the mountains of Aberbaijain. But what she finds is altogether more personal, and more upsetting.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Blair Witch Project

Dir. Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sánchez
88 min

The rushes of a student-made documentary investigating the legend of the Blair Witch in Burkittsville, Maryland, a quest that led the three filmmakers deep into the Appallachian woods. Easy to get lost in there...

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre