The Dreamed Adventure

Valeska Grisebach is one of the central figures of the so-called Berlin School, the loose movement of rigorous German realists that also includes Christian Petzold and Maren Ade. The Dreamed Adventure is her first feature since Western (2017), a near-decade gap that made its arrival in the main competition of the 79th Cannes Film Festival an event in itself. It premiered in May 2026 and was awarded the Jury Prize, Grisebach's first time competing for the Palme d'Or.

The film unfolds in a town on Bulgaria's south-eastern border, where Veska, an archaeologist, becomes entangled with an old acquaintance and, through him, with a smuggling scheme that edges into contested, dangerous territory. As in Western, Grisebach works at the frontier of Europe with a cast of non-professionals, building tension out of glances, silences and the slow accretion of trust and risk rather than incident. The result is a restrained, watchful film noir that withholds as much as it reveals.

Critics read the film as a deliberate dismantling of the neo-noir blueprint, swapping genre momentum for the ethnographic patience that is Grisebach's hallmark. Coming from a director who releases work only rarely, and who has shaped a generation of European realism, it was among the most discussed titles of the festival — proof that her singular, unhurried method has lost none of its quiet force.