Director: Derrick Borte
A prize trip to Paris turns a fictional spy story into a very real ordeal for its author in American Dreamer, a 2024 comedy-thriller from director Derrick Borte.
What is American Dreamer about?
Cathy Palmer spends her days as a housewife and her nights writing about a life she doesn't get to live — that of Rebecca Ryan, a glamorous international spy who exists only on the page. When a ghostwriting contest sends Cathy to Paris as the prize, the trip promises a break from routine, but an accident there pulls her into circumstances that start to echo the fiction she's been inventing. As the boundary between Cathy's invented spy and her own reality starts to blur, she has to figure out how much of what's happening to her is coincidence and how much she may have set in motion herself.
Cast & crew
Jim Gaffigan stars as the center of the story, with Robbie Jones, Tammy Blanchard, Eric D. Hill Jr., and Isabel Arraiza filling out a cast that mixes comic timing with escalating suspense.
Context & significance
American Dreamer, released in 2024, blends comedy, crime, romance, and thriller elements around the premise of a frustrated writer whose fictional creation starts bleeding into her real life. Director Derrick Borte uses the fish-out-of-water setup of an ordinary woman abroad to build both the film's humor and its tension, letting Cathy's imagination and her actual circumstances trade places over the course of the story. It's a premise that gets comic mileage out of Cathy's day job while still taking the escalating stakes of her Paris trip seriously enough to keep the plot moving forward.
Where & how to watch
American Dreamer is available on K-Time with Persian subtitles, letting viewers follow the dialogue in Farsi while watching the original performances. This page can be read without logging in, and starting the film only requires a free K-Time account. K-Time's browsing experience, from search to recommendations, is designed around the Persian-speaking diaspora.