Je vis dans le rêve de ma mère

The latest film from IFFR regular Jan Willem van Dam has the structure of a dream about a filmmaker’s life, dreamt by a mother (played by the filmmaker's own mother). ‘In your mother’s dream, you do as she says.’ Comments on current affairs and personal reveries go hand-in-hand with observations on film, filmmaking and the life of a filmmaker. The dream has epic proportions: it is a travelogue passing through many European countries, then finally Asia and ‘the island of honest actors’. To understand the world, it is necessary to travel it, the mother says - and this is what the young filmmaker does. With an adult voice-over, he is played by ten-year-old Chanoah Jap Ngie. The film’s reflective, improvised docu-realism is interrupted by a stylised short film, The Unprecedented Thirst for Freedom of Private L.B., which ‘bubbles to the surface’ when the young filmmaker receives an sms from his producer reminding him to make a film.