For some, the premiere of Valeska Grisebach’s new film was the kind of thing to be discussed in hushed tones. Here was the long-awaited return to Cannes, nine full years since Western, a singular film that, by now, is within its rights to be considered a masterpiece. On top of that, Grisebach secured the competition’s ever-intriguing Friday-afternoon berth—the same slot that’s kept critics from leaving the festival early by becoming a home for more adventurous titles like Elle, You Were Never Really Here, La Chimera, and The Mastermind. All of this was enough, at least for me, to suggest that something special might be coming. Grisebach has delivered that.
The Dreamed Adventure, the German director’s first film in almost a decade, is both a worthy follow-up to Western and a fascinating companion piece. It’s another Bulgarian border-town fable that draws from a classic Hollywood genre, and again with plenty of things to say about the collateral damage of European neoliberalism. But Grisebach isn’t leaning so much on the underlying themes of her previous film’s namesake but the dirty deals, shadowy cover-ups, and elusive mysteries of Raymond Chandler. It doesn’t hit with the same jolt of discovery or pull you in (at least initially) with quite the same gravitational pull, but it gradually rewards the viewer in different, no-less-compelling ways.
At 161 minutes and with numerous scenes of overlapping dialogue (mostly set around patio tables at night), this is a film that requests your time and attention, but it builds to one of those closing sequences that both clarifies and alchemises everything that’s come before. The story picks up when a local man, Said (Syuleyman Letifov, whose only other credit is Western, in a captivating performance), arrives back in the town of Svilengrad to do some not-quite-legal business and quickly has his car stolen. The next day, he runs into an old squeeze, Veska (Yana Radeva), who’s overseeing an archeological dig nearby and, later that night, goes to meet an influential (and clearly greasy) businessman named Iliya (Stoicho Kostadinov) to discuss the sale of some below-the-counter diesel. While there, he has a drink and starts to dance, then—all of a sudden—vanishes from the movie.
It’s difficult to describe the off-the-cuff way Grisebach pulls this off. In those opening 20-or-so minutes, you get to know Letifov’s character not from any particular line of dialogue, but more his naturally smiling face and the gentle manner in which he walks around with a cigarette at night. You start to enjoy his easy presence so much that this ensuing absence from the film hits hard. From here, Grisebach switches POV to Veska as she begins untangling the threads that Said has left behind. The director then significantly ups the stakes by adding a curious teenage girl, Maria (Denislava Yordanova), into the mix and suggests that she’s being groomed by one of Iliya’s men. In order to find Said and protect Maria, Veska starts ruffling some local feathers and sticking her nose where it isn’t wanted, effectively becoming a distant descendant of characters like Doc Sportello and Phillip Marlowe in the process (with some of the casual smoking and boozing to match).
One reason for the film’s strange hold is the liminal energy of Svilengrad itself: a small East Bulgarian town close to both the Greek and Turkish border—the kind of frontier where the rules of law are lax and there’s money to be made if you know how. One of The Dreamed Adventure‘s key locations is a hotel that was once used by sex workers for the trade of passing long-haul drives (a local garage owner also comments that he used to charge two Deutschmarks just to use the bathroom), but which has recently fallen into disrepair—a point that Grisebach hammers home by leaving a Happy New Year banner hanging wearily above the window. The space is now occupied by a group of affable Polish women who work in a solar panel assembly warehouse nearby, and who gather to drink with the henchmen of a rival boss named The Raven. More of this surprisingly expansive lore is peppered onto the story during many late-night conversations, and during which all kinds of drinks, jokes, and vulgarity are shared, along with the occasional breadcrumb for Veska to follow.
It’s in those scenes (which feel naturalistic but narratively precise) that Grisebach allows you to get a sense of this part of the world through the understandably hardened ways that people have learned to process it. She also leaves the murkier details of whatever criminality is going on mostly to the imagination. Having only seen the film once at this stage, I sense that some of its deeper meanings may require a second watch, which I very much intend. Its use of the archeological dig and how many of the locals turn out to support it (in particular alongside all the crumbling buildings and the new-money excess) positions the film as much at the border between European concepts of East and West as it does between a tangible past and an uncertain future. It might take a little time for Grisebach to cast that spell, but its hold is firm and lasting.
The Dreamed Adventure premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival.