THE DREAMERS AND I is an emotionally complex documentary about dreams grappling with reality.
Inspired by his three characters, global entrepreneurs who come to Silicon Valley to make their high-tech dreams a reality, the filmmaker becomes the film’s fourth character, joining them in the Sisyphean struggles of self-doubt, financial ruin and extended separations from family to make his artistic dreams a reality.
This verité documentary follows Carlos de la Lama-Noriega (Madrid), who founded Startup Embassy, a very special hacker house that offers an affordable, welcoming community to migrants like Habibe Turfan (Istanbul) and Lucas Gozálvez (Seville).
The filmmaker, Kenji Yamamoto, had always been a film editor and never directed his own film. With great trepidation, he took the leap, slept in a bunk bed with the camera on his pillow, captured his characters when they were uplifted and hopeful, when their dreams collapsed and when they tried again, with a rueful smile – saying “This is the entrepreneurial life.”
At first, Kenji thought his characters’ failures or successes would define his film, but he discovered that it was about something deeper: what happens when dreams and reality collide.
