Dreamcatcher

Name: Dreamcatcher
Genre: Drama, Crime, Documentary
Released: March 20, 2015
Duration: 104 min
Rating: 86

2015

METASCORE

Universal acclaim based on 11 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 8 Ratings

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6.3

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6.3	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 8 Ratings

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Movie Details & Credits

Showtime Networks | Release Date: March 20, 2015 | TV-MA

Summary: For twenty-five years Brenda Myers-Powell called herself Breezy and she dominated her world, or that's what she thought. It was a world that had turned her into a teenage, drug-addicted prostitute. After a violent encounter with a john, Brenda woke up in the hospital and decided to change her life. Today she is a beacon of hope and a pillarFor twenty-five years Brenda Myers-Powell called herself Breezy and she dominated her world, or that's what she thought. It was a world that had turned her into a teenage, drug-addicted prostitute. After a violent encounter with a john, Brenda woke up in the hospital and decided to change her life. Today she is a beacon of hope and a pillar of strength for hundreds of women and girls as young as fourteen who want to change their own lives. … Expand

Director: Kim Longinotto

Genre(s): Drama, Crime, Documentary

Rating: TV-MA

Runtime: 104 min

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Critic Reviews

100

Mark Adams

Mar 20, 2015

At heart Dreamcatcher is a simple film, but it is also a rigorous and compassionate one. Read full review

The Playlist Oktay Ege Kozak

Feb 2, 2015

Dreamcatcher is a love letter to a true American hero who roams our streets. Read full review

Katie Walsh

Mar 20, 2015

While Dreamcatcher lays bare some of the horrific violence and victimization that many women face, the film is ultimately hopeful, a testament to the strength and resilience that can be found in sisterhood. Read full review

Leslie Felperin

Feb 2, 2015

Just as Brenda lives by a credo never to judge another woman, so too does the film, which creates an uplifting portrait of redemption and acceptance. Read full review

Time Out London Cath Clarke

Mar 20, 2015

Dreamcatcher is harrowing. Read full review

Empire David Parkinson

Mar 20, 2015

A sensitive, sincere and humbling profile which is truly inspirational. Read full review

The Guardian Benjamin Lee

Mar 20, 2015

It’s grim, unfussy and deeply moving. Read full review

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User Reviews

DRauchDoes2015

May 28, 2015

I've seen the term 'harrowing' pop up as a frequent descriptor in many of the reviews I've read for Dreamcatcher. While it is entirely apt, I feel it may conjure the impression of a different movie, one more focused on shock-value kitchen sink melodrama. A more fitting phrase would beI've seen the term 'harrowing' pop up as a frequent descriptor in many of the reviews I've read for Dreamcatcher. While it is entirely apt, I feel it may conjure the impression of a different movie, one more focused on shock-value kitchen sink melodrama. A more fitting phrase would be 'heart-wrenching'. Yes, this is a gritty, horrifying documentary. But I've yet to see another this year with such all-encompassing empathy and understanding of the human condition at it's lowest point.

There are few non-fiction works of cinema that take aim at a world so horrendous I can hardly come to terms with it's very existence. Dreamcatcher, the latest from director Kim Longinotto, takes a long hard stare at rampant prostitution and the broken women who've fallen prey to a life of addiction, desperation, and seemingly hopeless circumstances. To call it affecting would be an understatement: this movie is absolutely riveting.

The film centers around Brenda Myers-Powell, founder of the titular Dreamcatcher Foundation, an organization that seeks to help individual women escape the trappings of the sex industry. The group, whose ethos is that of mutual understanding, respect, and solidarity, fights the good fight but goes about it in a way that is wholly modern and practical.

What is most fascinating about how Brenda works to wean victims away from prostitution is how incredibly personal, natural, and blunt her interactions are. She makes it painfully clear that her life once held the same bleak visage as those she is trying to save, and that the real way to help another human being is to understand where they are in life and what aid they simultaneously need and are willing to accept. Brenda's dialogues with these women subtly hint toward the idea that the best thing for someone in a terrible place is understanding above all else. Not feigned, obligatory compassion but a real, lived-in comprehension of a shared mindset.

Numerous firsthand accounts of physical and sexual violence are detailed by former (and current) prostitutes and they are truly shocking. The film allows it's various subjects to speak freely and depict the lifestyle they've become sucked into devoid of trashy sensationalism or didactic moralizing. I'd complain that the overall incessant misery becomes emotionally draining, but the stories are so brazen that they uplift for their sheer realism. You aren't being cheated or manipulated here with a false aggrandizement of squalor and hard times - these women are living in a nightmare often trivialized by stereotyping and flippant disregard. Dreamcatcher reminds us, vividly, of the humanity beneath the oppression.

It's a **** existence, no other way to phrase it.

Luckily, Brenda is here to help these women. Her job is, though certainly not thankless, an underrepresented work of social justice on the ground level. She resists the fatigue of her worn, battle-scarred, aging body and strives all hours of the day to assuage the constant suffering of those around her. She talks to women about their lives with an empathy that is marrow-deep. Her objective is always clear, but she never oversteps her bounds or forces a decision on one of her cases. Their lives are their own and Brenda acknowledges the trickiness of navigating the mentality of someone institutionalized to feed into their cesspool of grief, because she's lived it.

Dreamcatcher's greatest attribute, without discounting it's already transfixing, hypnotic look at destitution, is how it examines the mentality of those ingrained in prostitution. These stories demand to be heard, but the truly revelatory takeaway of Dreamcatcher is the humanization of the systematic victimization of people with no other alternative but to plunge further into the abyss. This is where the film transcends mere journalistic reporting and becomes an insightful, affecting work of art. Longinotto captures with unsettling lucidity the emotional realism of these circumstances, and nothing is more disquieting than when the audience is recounted stories from a former pimp himself.

I forget his name, but his speeches, elaborating on the abuse he himself endured as well as the fleshed-out, manipulative mentality he acquired in order to thrive in the pimp-game, are a thing of distressing magnetism. Dreamcatcher would have been a fine expose if it had centered solely on the female victims, but to gain access to a man willing to confess to his lifetime of odious, amorality without depicting his motivation as purely one-dimensional provides a depth of understanding that is something I've never seen before. His stories floored me, not because they were graphic, but because I could fathom his reasoning. I grew to empathize and even pity him.

Dreamcatcher left me exhausted in the best possible way. There hasn't been a film yet this year that impacted me more deeply.… Expand

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