by Kajal Kapoor for Winter Film Festival
See the sci-fi short film Sweet Dreams on February 19 @5:50PM at REGAL Union Square (850 Broadway) as part of New York City’s 14th Annual Winter Film Festival. Tickets now on sale!
What begins as an intimate story about pregnancy and abandonment evolves into a haunting meditation on capitalism, parenthood, and the price of staying alive.
As Sweet Dreams heads to the 2026 Winter Film Festival, writer-director Gary Alvarez and producer Erika Martinez reflect on building a grounded sci-fi world rooted in working-class Los Angeles, where dreams can be sold, systems feel inescapable, and love may be the last thing that isn’t for profit.
A Love Story Inside a System
When Gary first began writing Sweet Dreams in 2021, the inspiration was intimate. His wife was pregnant, and he imagined a story about a woman excited to become a mother whose partner disappears, leaving her to face birth and uncertainty alone. But as he sat with the idea, the story grew beyond its initial premise. “I wanted to layer it,” he explains, “and critique the lives that are out of our control—systems that force us to make decisions we don’t want to make.” Written at a time when images of children in detention centers were dominating headlines, the film’s imagery, including the haunting presence of cages, was intentional. Gary wanted audiences to consider the toll of survival in a world that demands 20-hour workdays, multiple jobs, less sleep, and ultimately, less time to dream.
Sweet Dreams is, fundamentally, a love story between partners, and between a mother and her newborn child. The speculative premise of selling an unborn child’s dreams may feel unsettling, but for Erika, that discomfort is the point. “In America, we’re so focused on consumerism and capitalism,” she says. “The idea that we could profit off someone who hasn’t even entered the world yet—it feels like something that could happen at any moment.” As an aunt, she sees the innocence children are born with, and the lack of choice they have in the systems they inherit. The film asks audiences to sit with that tension: What happens when survival pushes humans to turn against each other? And how far will a mother go to protect her child?
Grounded Sci-Fi and a Lived-In World
Though Sweet Dreams explores speculative technology, Gary describes it as “grounded sci-fi,” drawing tonal inspiration from films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Matrix. The technology may not exist yet, but emotionally the world feels close.
That realism was deliberate. Gary set the film in a working-class Los Angeles neighborhood, reflecting his own upbringing. “There are other parts of LA beyond the Westside and glittery Santa Monica,” he says. “You won’t see celebrities driving Ferraris- you’ll see people working, taking their kids to school.” The lived-in texture of the film came from deeply personal sources. Many of the props such as pillowcases, bedding, and artwork were pulled directly from Gary’s home. A mug on screen was made by his brother in middle school. The baby’s mobile belonged to his son.
What began as inspiration drawn from his wife’s pregnancy became physically embedded in the production design. Erika, serving as both producer and assistant director, helped cultivate that authenticity. “It became a family film in a way,” she says. Her own father, mother and grandmother contributed behind the scenes, and a dedicated production designer worked up until the final hour.
Community, Confidence, and What Comes Next
Gary and Erika first connected through a Long Beach production company where Erika had recently turned an internship into a full-time job. A lunch meeting in late 2022 sparked a collaboration that would lead to filming by the end of 2022. Partnerships with Justice 4 My Sister and Operation Street Kidz brought young and underrepresented creatives onto set, offering hands-on experience and mentorship.
For Erika, Sweet Dreams marks her first solo producing credit. Festival recognition has strengthened her confidence and clarified her creative voice. Through her company, Pocket Monkey Productions, she plans to launch a podcast centered on everyday misfits and underrepresented voices. Gary, who has primarily written and directed short films, is ready to take on a feature, whether expanding Sweet Dreams or developing one of his other screenplays. He’s also working on a graphic novel adaptation of his superhero project Brown Falcon, previously a quarterfinalist at the Austin Film Festival, reimagined to confront contemporary political realities head-on.
As Sweet Dreams reaches audiences at the Winter Film Festival, both hope viewers leave reflecting on the cost of survival in a world that monetizes even our most intimate spaces, and on the enduring power of love in the face of it. In a world that threatens to take even our dreams, what are we still willing to protect?
About Winter Film Festival
Winter Film Festival is an all-volunteer women and minority-run organization as part of Winter Film Awards Inc, a 501(c)3 organization founded in 2011 to celebrate emerging talent in local and international filmmaking.
The 14th Annual Winter Film Festival runs February 18-22 2026 includes a diverse mixture of animated films, documentaries, comedies, romances, dramas, horror films, music videos and web series of all lengths. Our five-day event is jam-packed with screenings and Q&A sessions at NYC’s REGAL Union Square, six Education sessions/workshops and a variety of filmmaker networking events all coming to a glittering close on February 22 with our red-carpet gala Awards Ceremony.
Winter Film Festival programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Promotional support provided by the NYC Mayor’s Office of Media & Entertainment.
For more information about Winter Film Festival, visit WinterFilmFest.org
email us at info@winterfilmawards.com and visit us at Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
