Cannes 2026: The Dream Adventure, the mafia and the territory (review)

For her first time in official competition, the German Valeska Grisebach has created a mafia thriller that is both broad and opaque at the heart of a Europe in disarray. A shock.

Species of spaces. This was the title of the poetic study of Perec who wrote: “ what we call everydayness is not evidence, but opacity: a form of blindness, a form of anesthesia. » Veska (Yana Radeva), the heroine of the formidable Dream adventure by Valeska Grisebach walks blindly through a Bulgarian town where we understand that she once knew its nooks and crannies. Svilengrad borders Turkey, in the heart of desolate southeastern Europe. Here, people and goods transit illegally. Corruption and intimidation guide social relations.

So it happens that things disappear without leaving a trace. Veska left young, made her life elsewhere. Here she is back. Today, she is organizing archaeological excavations on a high site and examining from the inside this earth which is everywhere rotten. Svilengrad is controlled by an omnipotent local mafia boss. Said gangster, Evka knew her well in her youth. Who knows, maybe they even loved each other?

“ Opacity “, “ anesthesia “, that’s what we feel when following in the footsteps of this heroine who seems to be lugged here and there without really controlling what happens to her. A tension suffocates the frame more and more. We remain on our guard. Especially since Saïd (Syuleyman Alilov Letifo), the heroine’s old friend, has strangely disappeared after a discussion with a gasoline dealer. First his car, then his entire being which evaporated from the film. One more mystery. An anxiety to manage.

The archaeologist that is Veska knows that she must move the earth to extract vestiges of a heavy past. All he has to do then is raise his head and go back down to town to apprehend the shreds of the present. A present where everything is hidden. With the help of an almost invisible but very subtle staging, the German filmmaker (Desire(s), Western…) signs an insidious, dry thriller, which advances with a falsely hesitant step towards its resolution.

In this Europe in the blind spot leaning against the ruins of the former Soviet bloc, in this abandoned territory, life does not reinvent itself, it remains fixed in its ancestral principles. The carefree young people have mostly become adults shaped by this vitiated environment. He made them into cold, desperate monsters.

Veska will try to save a teenager surrounded by predators at the last minute, seeing in her the wounded girl she once was. Opacity and blindness gradually dissipated. Space made us feel all its terrestrial magnitudes. Like in the great westerns. Impressive.

Germany – Bulgaria. By Valeska Grisebach. With: Yana Radeva, Syuleyman Alilov Letifo, Nikolay Shekerdjiev… Duration: 2h41. Released July 15.