Directed by Alireza Ghassemi, “Rainy Dreams” combines live-action and animation to explore the dreams of displaced children waiting in limbo in Calais, France, translating their nocturnal hallucinations into animated sequences including Candles Sealed in Wooden Boxes, a Circus of Judgment, and a Boy Without a Shadow.
The French-Iranian co-production film, which won the Cannes Documentary Award for “When East Meets West” in January, has been selected for the Animation in Focus category at the Hong Kong-Asia Film Finance Forum. The film, produced by Mojan Aria, Reza Bastani and Constance Le Skualnec through Mystic Makers, follows five children who have gone into exile in a northern French port town, where many unaccompanied minors are waiting in hopes of making it to the UK. The filmmakers enter their world as an animated dog aboard a live-action ferry, and the children’s visions transform into animated sequences featuring crying boots, strange volcanoes, and flying tanks.
The project will be Ghasemi’s second feature film, following In the Land of Brothers, which premiered at Sundance in 2024 and won Best Director at the World Cinema Dramatic Competition. The Iranian filmmaker, currently based in Paris, is a Cannes Residency and Berlinale Talent graduate.
Ghasemi explained his fascination with the subject. “When I moved to France from Iran a few years ago, one of the first things I noticed was that the quality of my dreams changed in a strange and immediate way. They became heavier, more fragmented, and more disturbing, as if the experience of change had entered my unconscious mind before I fully understood it during my waking hours,” he said.
“Later, when I spent time in Calais, I met unaccompanied children and began to listen to their dreams. I noticed how often traces of fear, instability, and anxiety remain in their sleep. The heart of this film is about how systems of violence and uncertainty enter their inner lives. When children live in a constant state of instability, that state does not end when they fall asleep, but mutates, repeats, and reappears in other forms.”
Asked about the similarities to the ongoing conflict in Iran, Ghasemi said, “Although ‘Rainy Dreams’ is not directly about Iran, the film inevitably resonates with the current war and its human impact. It is about prolonged insecurity, fear, forced displacement, and children living under a system of violence that continues to shape their minds even when they sleep.”
He added, “These days I often think about my children who go to sleep while the sounds of military planes and distant explosions fill the night around them. As an Iranian film director, I can’t take my eyes off the reality of what’s happening in Iran right now.”
Producer Mozeen Arya emphasized the project’s humanistic approach. “When I first read Rainy Dreams, I knew I had to support this project. We live in a time when dehumanization often feels at an all-time high. Children who are victims of war, killed, wounded, and displaced, are too often reduced to statistics circulated in social media stories in the 24 hours before their disappearance.”
Alia added, “Rainy Dreams honors these children in a way we rarely get to see. What could be more human than being invited into someone’s dreams?”
Producer Constance Le Scouarnec outlined the project’s financing strategy. “Since winning the Cannes Documentation Award for When East Meets West in January 2026, the project has begun to attract strong international attention. Funding structures are currently being built across France, Iran and the United States.”
This multilingual production will be filmed in English, French, Dinka, Kurdish, Vietnamese, Arabic, Farsi and Dari-Persian. The project is seeking funding, co-producers, distributors and pre-sales at HAF.
