Life is Dream / Het Leven is Droom (NL)
A film by Vanesa Abajo Pérez
Synopsis
In the end of the 1960s, Vanesa’s parents fled the Franco-regime’s deep poverty to pursue their dream in the Netherlands. Working their blue-collar jobs for hours and hours, for over 45 years, their purpose was to return to Spain wealthy and comfortable. There, in a house full of Dutch porcelain and shiny gold, they can now finally rest. Vanesa was raised and resides in the Netherlands, but still feels trapped in their expectant illusion, even with the distance between them. Torn between two homes, she starts to re-examine her past. What kind of life did they truly live? And did she have the freedom to make her own life decisions?
In Life Is Dream the director dissects her family's immigrant-dream with the poetry and precision of her camera. While the boundaries between dream and reality, illusion and disillusion, slowly dissolve, the film develops into an intimate, surrealist story of self-discovery questioning the value of family ties.