I will never forget Meinhard Neumann as long as I live! In his only film to date, the amateur actor embodies a German assembly worker who, together with his colleagues, brings (supposed) progress to a Bulgarian village in the form of a hydroelectric power plant. However, the film is not called “Western” for nothing: the workers who have arrived build a “fort” complete with German flags, ride wild horses – and in the looming conflict with the locals, Meinhard Neumann inevitably reminds us of the iconic, stoic Western hero Clint Eastwood. At least until he starts dancing in the best scene of the film.
The Bremen-born director Valeska Grisebach (“Sehnsucht”) made it into the second most important Cannes section, Un Certain Regard, in 2017 with “Western”. Eight years later, “The Dreamed Adventure” even made it into the competition. Nevertheless, I was initially briefly disappointed when the face of the main actor, Syuleyman Alilov Letifov, immediately seemed familiar to me. So this time it’s not amateurs again, but professional actors? But puff cake! Letifov has only appeared in one film before: “Western”! Apparently I can’t forget him either. Grisebach obviously has a feel for faces that burn themselves into the brain in just two hours in a way that even long-time schoolmates often don’t.
With Jana Radewa as Veska, Valeska Grisebach has found the next amateur actress who you simply can’t get out of your head even after the credits have rolled.
Letifov plays Said, a building contractor who returns from the Rhodopes to his old home of Svilengrad in the border triangle between Bulgaria, Türkiye and Greece. Actually, he just wants to complete a diesel deal with a local young mafioso named Der Rabe. But when his car is stolen, he’s stuck. Luckily, he meets an old friend, Veska (Jana Radewa), who is leading the excavations around a nearby castle ruin. When Said simply disappears at some point, she and a friend take over the tanker full of diesel for him – and slip into the middle of a feud between the two local mafia godfathers…
Veska, the barbarian
But so that there are no misunderstandings: “The Dreamed Adventure” is of course not a gangster film. But it still gets really uncomfortable. There are posters of missing people everywhere; once it is said that Svilengrad begins where the law ends. In this environment, even the highly educated Veska would rather be like Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Conan, the Barbarian” – and a certain resignation to the patriarchal conditions probably also plays a role when at some point she simply refuses to kowtow to the mafia machos. Even the greatest catastrophe always seems only seconds away – and sometimes you can hardly help but look through your fingers at the screen.
It can’t actually be a coincidence that the heroine of the film is called Veska – and is therefore only the letters “al” away from the director’s first name: Like the archaeologist Veska in the sandy ground in front of the tower ruins, whose driveway is so steeply stoned that the cars only ever reach the top with flat tires, her almost namesake is also digging deeper and deeper. While working on “Western,” Valeska Grisebach had many conversations about her experiences, especially after the first free elections in 1990 – and the constant setbacks that the Bulgarian population has had to endure since then.
A film like an excavation
Said had to change his name twice when he was 12 and 15 as a result of the state’s assimilation policy. “The Dreamed Adventure” is full of such highly specific anecdotes, mostly told in places and by people who are clearly not sets or actors. Valeska Grisebach creates a comprehensive picture of a failed region in which women, the elderly and the weak are always the victims in the end.
Many of the characters only appear for a few minutes and then don’t necessarily appear again – and even the (supposed) protagonist suddenly disappears from his own film for a good hour. This not only gives “The Dreamed Adventure” an extra level of authenticity, it also remains absolutely unpredictable until the last shot. At the same time, the film meanders in between without at least a rudimentary genre framework like in “Westerns” – and that could be a problem for some, especially given the running time of almost three hours.
Conclusion: After “Western”, Valeska Grisebach remained loyal to Bulgaria and continued to dig for authentic, exciting and shocking stories in personal conversations. She has once again struck cinematic gold, even if with 167 minutes she challenges the audience’s patience more than in “Western”.
We saw The Dreamed Adventure at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, where the film had its world premiere in official competition.