“Sweet Dreams” is a story of survival.
Set in the near future, this sci-fi short film will transport us to a time when most people have stopped dreaming due to severe sleep-deprivation. This extreme lack of sleep is the result of 20-hour workdays, a new norm. Dreamcatcher clinics have popped up all over, offering “surrogate dreaming” services to “lackers” who are willing to pay big bucks for the purest dreams of all: those of babies still in the womb, untouched by the world outside.
Out of desperation, Esperanza enters a Dreamcatcher clinic while she’s 8-months pregnant. She needs money bad after her partner Kiké disappeared inexplicably, her savings are down to the last $500 and no one will hire her because it’s legal to discriminate against pregnant women applying for a job.
After a surrogate dreaming session at Roger’s clinic, Esperanza experiences sharp pains in her belly — and to her shock, she dreams for the first time in 10 years! She suspects the technology caused the pain and her dream so she steals a pair of electrodes to conduct the procedure at home, where her baby experiences a dream that hints toward Kiké’s possible whereabouts…
Esperanza confronts Roger with this revelation and he fears that the blackmarket business he’s running behind the clinic’s front will be exposed. The two go head to head and Esperanza, her baby and Kiké’s fate is on the line.
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Meet Gary Alvarez, writer/director/producer
Gary Alvarez is a writer, director and producer from Southeast Los Angeles. A first-gen Chicano, he wrote his first screenplay based on a coast-to-coast mission hitchhiking across Mexico which he later directed as his M.F.A. thesis at Chapman University.
Since then he has written, directed and/or produced short films, music videos and documentaries as well as shot online content for the SELA Arts Festival and L.A. Taco.
After the pandemic shut down all production, Gary refocused his attention on screenwriting and wrote a superhero pilot called “Brown Falcon” which advanced as a semifinalist in the Humanitas New Voices Fellowship as well as a quarterfinalist at the Austin Film Festival. “Sweet Dreams,” his newest script, has placed in several screenplay competitions and landed at #2 on Coverfly’s Red List.
When not writing or on set, Gary teaches film production to high schoolers in his community.
But what gets him out of bed these days is learning to be a new dad to his infant son, Sol Guadalupe.
Portrait by Michael Ori, Sundance 2020.
