Awarded the Grand Prix at Cannes 2026, Valeska Grisebach’s new film Das geträumte Abenteuer takes us to a place few of us know: Svilengrad, a small town in southeastern Bulgaria, where Europe ends and the world carries on. It sits at the tripoint with Turkey and Greece, on one of the world’s busiest trade borders. A place full of history, movement, and hidden stories.
At its center is Veska, an archaeologist who returns to her hometown for an excavation. There she meets Said, an old acquaintance from the Rhodope Mountains, whose car has been stolen. Without a second thought, she brings him along to the dig site, and the two spend the day together. The next morning, Said is gone. Veska sets out to find him and, in doing so, uncovers stories from the 1990s. Stories of freedom and shattered dreams, quick money, violence, and men in power.
The post-communist transition period serves as an important starting point for director Grisebach’s work on the film. In conversations with people of her generation in Bulgaria, she repeatedly encountered descriptions of the ’90s as a “masculine time”, a time “like war”. She weaves this narrative with genre cinema and its familiar imagery of strength, weakness and power, this time with a woman at its center. Veska observes, remembers and acts. Her protagonist is shaped by the women she met during her research: businesswomen who, in the ’90s, took risks at Europe’s external border, lost, and kept going anyway.
The fact that Veska is an archaeologist was also inspired during Grisebach’s research. During a trip to the late antique fortress of Bukelon near the Turkish border, Grisebach encountered a team of archaeologists. Their precise attention to faint traces became a fitting counterpart to a story in which Veska herself begins digging into her own past. “Das geträumte Abenteuer” is a film that takes its time and gives that time back. As an experience, as a memory, and as the face of its stunning lead actress, who is not easily forgotten.
Text: Inga Krumme / Credits: KomplizenFilm, Bernhard Keller
Das geträumte Abenteuer by Valeska Grisebach.
In theaters from 24.09.2026. Find all the premiere dates here.
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