I dream
2017 · 15m · Chile
Directed by Jota Arriagada
Genres: drama, sci-fi, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
In the very near future, dreams have been privatised and sleeping without payment counts as illegal. Former police officer Carlos risks everything for one last dream of a missing wife.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The privatized-dreams premise is competent sci-fi worldbuilding, but it's deployed so earnestly it collapses into sentiment—Arriagada's playing it straight when the concept begs to be cracked open and inverted.
A disciplined futuristic noir that understands its debts to cyberpunk and memory-loss cinema, executing the formal grammar of the genre with restraint and a melancholic precision that recalls better work by Villeneuve.
The film lives or dies on Carlos's face in the dream sequence itself—and Arriagada commits entirely to holding on that single moment of recognition, letting performance and silence do the work of a budget-conscious 15 minutes.