Paris, 1968: student protests are boiling over in the streets, and inside one shuttered apartment three young cinephiles build a world that runs on its own rules. The Dreamers turns a single summer into a study of obsession, friendship, and the pull of the movies themselves.
What is The Dreamers about?
Matthew, an American exchange student living in Paris, meets Theo and Isabelle, a French brother and sister whose lives revolve around the Cinematheque Francaise. When their parents leave the city, the three retreat into the siblings' apartment and invent a private universe built from film trivia, dares, and a slowly shifting balance of power between them. Outside, the unrest of May 1968 keeps climbing; inside, the trio's games grow more consuming, blurring the line between admiration, rivalry, and something closer to obsession. Bernardo Bertolucci frames their isolation as both a refuge and a trap, letting the political noise of the era seep in only at the edges until it can no longer be ignored.
About the cast
Michael Pitt plays Matthew with a wide-eyed curiosity that anchors the film's stranger turns, while Eva Green's screen debut as Isabelle announces a performer unafraid of the material's intensity. Louis Garrel completes the trio as Theo, and the supporting cast includes Anna Chancellor, Robin Renucci, and a knowing cameo appearance from Jean-Pierre Leaud, whose own career runs through the French New Wave cinema the film keeps quoting.
Context & significance
Bertolucci built the film around real footage and imagery from the era, treating cinema history as a language the three leads speak fluently. The soundtrack and the recurring references to classic titles work less as decoration than as a map of how deeply the characters have organized their identities around what they watch. The result is a period piece that is as much about the act of watching films as it is about the events of 1968 themselves.
Watching The Dreamers on Ktime
The Dreamers streams on K-Time with a Persian dub and Persian subtitles, and the full catalogue page is free to browse. Watching requires only a free K-Time account login, with no separate purchase involved — the platform is built around a Farsi-first experience for Persian-speaking audiences wherever they are.