The Dreamers And I

Director Kenji Yamamoto and Producer Nancy Kelly in person for Q&A after the screening!

Three immigrant entrepreneurs arrive in the U.S. to make their high-tech dreams come true. Carlos de la Lama-Noriega from Spain is the founder of Startup Embassy, a so-called hacker house that offers an affordable, welcoming live/work community of like-minded geeks as they labor in obscurity. Habibe Turfan, a materials scientist from Turkey, is working on her dream project, which she calls Stealth Startup. AI engineer Lucas Gozálvez, also from Spain, is CEO of another startup, Caleida, and the recent author of “The Hunger Games of Coding: Will AI Replace Developers or Trigger a Brutal Surge in Demand.”

Filmmaker Kenji Yamamoto had always been a film editor, never directed his own film. With great trepidation, he moves into the hacker house and makes himself the film’s fourth character. Sleeping in a bunk bed with the camera on his pillow, he charts their Sisyphean struggles of self-doubt, impending financial ruin and dissolving marriages. As he struggles to bring his film to life, he realizes their struggles are also his struggles.

Kenji knew his characters’ tech failures or successes would shape his film, and they do; but as the film takes shape, he realizes it is about something deeper and more universal – what happens when dreams collide with reality.

“An insider’s glimpse into the challenging road ahead as each [Dreamer] tries to turn an idea into a profitable reality.” – San Jose Mercury News