Sweet Dreams

Sweet Dreams
  • Short Film Competition

Year: 2024

Length: 34 mins

Country: United States

Language: English

Premiere: NYC Premiere

Directed by: Gary Alvarez

Produced by: Erika Martinez, Gary Alvarez

Starring: Andrea St. Martine (Esperanza), Adam Daniel (Roger), Francisco Antonio (Kiké), Sean Michael Conway (Wade)

Content Warnings: Implied Violence‎, Graphic Violence‎

SEE THE FILM

Thursday Feb 19, 5:50 PM-8:45 PM – Thursday Evening Program 1 – Short Films + QA

Set in a near future where most people can no longer dream, SWEET DREAMS follows Esperanza, a young woman preparing to become a mother for the first time. Weeks before her baby is due, her partner Kiké disappears without a trace. As her search for him intensifies and her savings run out, Esperanza turns to surrogate dreaming—a controversial new technology that allows expectant mothers to sell the dreams of their unborn children through a dreamcatcher clinic. What begins as a desperate solution soon grows unsettling, as Esperanza suspects the clinic may be connected to Kiké’s disappearance, forcing her to confront the hidden cost of commodifying dreams and the future itself.

About the Director

Writer/director Gary Alvarez was reborn on the road while hitchhiking in the luggage compartment of a bus across Mexico from coast to coast. The stories he penned on that trip evolved into thirtysomething BFFs RV-ing on a drug-fueled trip to the Northern Lights and Chicano superheroes fighting government, AI Super Agents and 90s teenage rocknrollers conquering the world! But what gets him out of bed every morning is the joy of being a husband to his wife Thelmy and a dad to his son, Sol Guadalupe.

WFF Interviews

Awards

2025 Independent Shorts Awards – Best Sci-Fi Short
2025 Wildsound Film Festival (Canada) – Best Directing
2025 El Encuentro Latino Film Festival – Independent Filmmakers Award
2025 El Encuentro Latino Film Festival – Best Writing nominee, Best Actress nominee, Best Supporting Actor nominee, Best Ensemble Cast nominee, Best Fx Design nominee
2025 Indiex Film Fest – Best Sci-Fi Short nominee