Janus Films has acquired all North American rights to “The Dreamed Adventure,” directed by acclaimed German filmmaker Valeska Grisebach (“Western”), the company announced Thursday. The film premiered in the Competition section at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, where it was awarded the Jury Prize.
Janus Films will announce theatrical release plans in the coming weeks. The deal was negotiated between Janus Films and The Match Factory.
The official synopsis reads: In Svilengrad, a small town on the Bulgarian border, Veska (Yana Radeva) crosses paths with Said (Syuleyman Letifov), an old acquaintance whose car has been stolen. Offering her help, she brings him along to the excavation site where she is working as an archaeologist. As they reconnect, Veska is pulled more into the shady world that he (Said) has emerged from, soon embarking on her own exploration of the criminal ties that lurk beneath the surface of this seemingly innocent town at the outskirts of Europe. As figures from her own past start to close in, Veska is forced to confront the truth about the town and her experiences.
In his review of the film, TheWrap’s Ben Croll wrote: “’The Dreamed Adventure’ wholly subverts genre tropes, hewing to a deliberately meandering pace as it embeds in this world with little narrative urgency. The ostensible missing-person case ultimately cares little about the central inquiry, all while animated by a keen sense of observation. This is a film of details and detours, digressive above all, cast with non-professionals native to the region. It plays as an ethnographic travelogue, using a potboiler hook for lightly applied narrative structure.”
The film was produced by Komplizen Film and co-produced by Valeska Grisebach, Kazak Productions, Miramar Film, Panama Film, New Matter Films, ARTE France Cinéma and ZDF/ARTE.
The film received the support of Der Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Filmförderungsanstalt, Deutscher Filmförderfonds, Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung, Creative Europe MEDIA, Aide aux cinémas du monde, Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée, Institut français, Bulgarian National Film Center, Österreichisches Filminstitut, and ÖFI+, Filmfonds Wien.
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