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 Dreaming in American gives expression to the space between dreams and reality, the interplay between the imagined America--in the minds of immigrants and citizens alike--and people’s actual experiences. While essentially a documentary, one of the project’s central aims is to show how the line between fiction and nonfiction is blurred. The movie shows the distinction between fantasy and reality by interspersing live-action vérité scenes of the characters’ lives with animated sequences of memories of the past, hopes for the future, fantasies of the present, and dreams—all created from information culled from interviews and dream diaries with the participants. The film explores the ways in which the rural community of Aimorés, Brazil, actively constructs the Sonho Americano (American Dream), contesting its meaning and reinforcing its strength. Satellite dishes, perched ubiquitously on rooftops across Brazil, pump American movies and television into the humblest homes. Here, in the families’ modest living rooms and kitchens, the mostly fictional and heavily materialistic images of America melt together in the imagination and become the ideal of happiness, desire, and success. The story examines the Dream’s magnetic force in inspiring thousands of Brazilians to immigrate illegally to the United States, providing glimpses into the convoluted networks set up to realize this ultimately elusive goal. Focusing on one family’s struggles in attempting to achieve their version of the American Dream, the film mirrors the fractured nature of many immigrants’ lives: leaping back and forth between Brazil and the US, English and Portuguese, the past and the present, the real and the imagined. Download Press Kit |
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