Cult filmmakers Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn are finally getting their well-deserved spotlight to celebrate their third film “Dream Team.”
The duo, who previously directed “L For Leisure” and “Two Plains and a Fancy,” write, direct, and produce “Dream Team” which follows two Interpol agents as they uncover an international, interspecies mystery involving psychic coral, a sexually suggestive scientist, and an invisible coworker with a very vindictive streak.
Esther Garrel and Alex Zhang Hungtai play the two lead spies in the post-modern feature that is being billed as a “soft-core fever dream” and an “absurdist homage to 90’s basic cable TV thrillers.” The film was also shot in 16mm.
“Dream Team” will kick off a retrospective of Kalman and Horn’s filmography at the Metrograph in New York City. Their two previous feature credits will play In Theater as part of the “Retro-Futurism: The Films of Lev Kalman & Whitney Horn” series, and also screen At Home for series “Films By Lev Kalman & Whitney Horn.”
“Dream Team” premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The satirical comedy-slash-sci-fi film is produced by Kalman, Horn, Sarah Winshall, Pierce Varous, and Jane Schoenbrun.
“Dream Team” also screened alongside producer Schoenbrun’s “I Saw the TV Glow” at the inaugural LA Festival of Movies, which was co-presented by MUBI and Mezzanine. The festival was created to redefine Los Angeles as a destination for independent film, with other programming highlights including acclaimed features “Gasoline Rainbow” and “Good One.”
Meanwhile, “Dream Team” producer Schoenbrun is making their own dreams known. Schoenbrun said on the A24 podcast that they would “really like to make an Apatow-style comedy” next, and even teased an “I Saw the TV Glow” sequel to make a trilogy with directorial debut “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.” Before that, though, the auteur is set to release their debut novel “Public Access Afterworld” through the Random House imprint Hogarth books.
“It’s called ‘Public Access Afterworld,’” Schoenbrun said. “And I just wrote — no one asked me to — but I wrote like 1600 pages of a screenplay that was meant to be the first two seasons of a three season TV show. So I pitched it and a bunch of the networks were like, it skews a little young for us. I was like, all right, I’m going to write this thing as like a series of three novels. And I’m going to teach myself how to do that. And I basically spent the next year and a half doing that.”
“Dream Team” premieres November 15 at Metrograph in New York City from distributor Yellow Veil Pictures. Check out the trailer below.
