California Dreams

Description

Toeing the line between documentary, fiction, and uncomfortable comedy, director Mike Ott (Littlerock, Festival 2010; Pearblossom Highway, Festival 2012) returns with an eccentric portrait of five aspiring actors in Lancaster, California, whose Hollywood dreams are a world away, despite their geographic proximity. Cory (Cory Zacharia), struggles to find the money for a flight to Germany for a film role he’s been offered by a friend. This is not an easy proposition given that he hasn’t had a job in years, and his mother gets by on welfare. Other dreamers orbiting Cory and the town include lonely Filipino Patrick (Patrick Llaguno) and the virtually homeless Carole Anne (Carolan J. Pinto) who practices her Oscar acceptance speech in the car she lives in. Ott continues to draw inspiration from this sunbaked corner of California, a world away from Hollywood despite being just an hour’s drive by car. Lusciously filmed in warm, gauzy light by a mostly still and wide-lensed camera, the stunning Mojave landscapes that the subjects inhabit is imparted with a fittingly dreamlike quality by cinematographer Mike Gioulakis. The result is a lonely evocation of just how far the subjects lives are from their aspirations, and the bittersweet reality of trying to measure up to big dreams. –Jesse Dubus

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