EXCLUSIVE: Italian-Venezuelan filmmaker Daniela De Francesco’s thriller Dreamcatchers has started shooting across southern and central Italy, with a cast led by Filippo Scotti, the breakout star of The Hand Of God, Saul Nanni, Angeliki Papoulia and Lorenzo Gioielli.
The story follows a young doctor about to begin his PhD at a prestigious sleep clinic, who persuades his childhood friend to undergo an experimental treatment known as ‘The Cure’. When the therapy pushes him into lucid dreaming, the boundary between sleep and reality begins to collapse, and a shocking murder takes place that will expose the true nature of the Cure.
Dreamcatchers marks the debut feature of De Francesco, who co-wrote the script with Andrea Piva. It is an Italy-Belgium-Argentina co-production between Claudio Esposito of Italy’s The Piranesi Experience, Filippo Montalto of Italy’s Andromeda Film, Kristian Van Der Heyden for Belgium’s Harald House, and Natalí Cordoba of Argentina’s Largavista Cine.
The project was developed through Biennale Cinema College and MFI Script2Film, and was previously presented at MIA Market 2024 in the WannaTasteIT section. Backers include Creative Europe Media, the Apulia Film Fund, the Italian Ministry of Culture – DG Cinema, the Cordoba cash rebate and the Belgian Tax Shelter.
“Sleep occupies a third of our lives, yet it remains one of the most hidden and least explored areas of human experience,” De Francesco told Screen. “With this film, I wanted to enter that intimate and fragile territory. Setting the story in a sleep clinic allowed us to explore the tension between the scientific desire to measure and control the body and the irreducible mystery of the dreaming mind.”
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