Sultana’s Dream

a film by

Spain, Germany / 83' / 09/2023 / animation

Inés a Spanish artist lives in India and stumbles upon Sultana's Dream, a science fiction story written by Rokeya Hossain in 1905. It describes Ladyland, a utopia in which women rule the country while men live in seclusion and are responsible for household chores. Fascinated by the story Inés embarks on a journey across the country to search for the one place where women can live in peace.

“With wit and a certain ironic humour, through original and fascinating visual and sound materials, symbolic colours, images, music and sounds that evoke the depth of the film, they recreate the dreamlike world”
Square Eyes - Section Logo Official Selection Edición1
Square Eyes - macarons_so_competition_noir_gb
Square Eyes - Black 2024-Competition-Laurels
“With wit and a certain ironic humour, through original and fascinating visual and sound materials, symbolic colours, images, music and sounds that evoke the depth of the film, they recreate the dreamlike world”
Square Eyes - Section Logo Official Selection Edición1
Square Eyes - macarons_so_competition_noir_gb
Square Eyes - Black 2024-Competition-Laurels

Isabel Herguera

Biography

Isabel Herguera is a Spanish animation film director with an international background. She studied fine arts at the Universidad del País Vasco and continued her studies at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf. She later earned a master’s degree from Calarts in Los Angeles, where she directed Los Muertitos (1993), an animated short about the wall separating Mexico and the United States. In 1997 she founded her own studio Loko Pictures (1996-2004), with which she produced numerous commercials and her animated short The Balloon (2003).
In 2003, Isabel returned to Europe, where she became director of Animac, the Catalonia International Animated Film Festival (2003-12) and coordinator of the Laboratorio de imágen en movimiento at Arteleku in San Sebastian (2003-14). She directed various animated short films that won awards and were nominated for the Goya Prize.
Isabel has been a professor at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, since 2005, at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing since 2012 and has been a professor in the animation department at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne since 2017. She has held workshops on animation in many places around the world such as Ethiopia, China, Cuba, Australia, Korea, Colombia, Mexico and Italy, although this is the place where she has most recently developed her work, in India, which gave rise to the Sultana’s Dream project, is her first feature film.

Filmography

● Sultana’s Dream – 2023 – feature
● Kutxa beltza – 2017 – short film
● Amore d’Inverno – 2015 – short film
● Bajo la Almohada – 2012 – short film
● Amar – 2010 – short film
● La gallina ciega – 2005 – short film

Square Eyes -

Crew

Director: Isabel Herguera
Screenplay: Isabel Herguera, Gianmacro Serra
Producer: Isabel Herguera, Chelo Loureiro, Mariano Baratech, Fabian Driehorst, Iván Miñambres
DOP: Eduardo Elosegi
Sound design: Gianmacro Serra, Simon Bastian
Sound editing & mix: Simon Bastian
Sound supervisor: Volker Zeigermann
Foley: Martin Langenbach
Editor: Gianmacro Serra
Composer: Gianmacro Serra
Art director: Isabel Herguera

Animation:
Izibene Oñederra Aramendi, Ana María Sabater Araújo, Paula Valiño Rivera, Sergio Pereira del Castillo, María José Alfonso Torrescusa, Francisco Muñoz de Gregorio, María Manero Muro, Troyvasanth Chandrakanth, Rajesh Thakare, Bhusan, Nelson Cabrera Curbelo

Voices:
Miren Arrieta Inés – Spain
Dedjani Mukherjee Rokeya Hossain – India
Miren Gabilondo Inés mother – Spain
Nausheen Javeed Sudhanya – India
Ranjitha Rajeevan Sister Sara – India
Mary Beard England
Paul Preciado Spain
Roberto Bessi Italy
Manu Khurana Amar – India

Festivals

100+ selections, 10+ awards

Select highlights: 

  • San Sebastián International Film Festival, Spain (22 – 30 September, 2023)
    Main Competition Won: Best Basque Film & Basque Screenwriters Award for Best Script
  • Filmfest Hamburg, Germany (28 September – 7 October, 2023)
    Official Selection Won: Hamburg Producers Award
  • DOK Leipzig – Int. Documentary and Animated Film Festival, Germany (8 – 15 October, 2023)
    Out-of-Competition
  • São Paulo Int. Film Festival, Brazil (19 October – 1 November, 2023)
    New Filmmakers Competition
  • Tokyo International Film Festival, Japan (23 October – 1 November, 2023)
    World Focus section
  • Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, India (27 October – 5 November, 2023)
    Focus South Asia
  • International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, The Netherlands (8 – 19 November, 2023)
    Best of Fests
  • ANIMA – International Animation Film Festival, Belgium (23 February – 3 March, 2024)
    International Competition Won: Award for Best Animated Feature
  • Jeonju International Film Festival, South Korea (1 – 10 May, 2024)
    World Cinema
  • World Festival of Animated Film – Animafest Zagreb, Croatia (3 – 8 June, 2024)
    Grand Competition – Feature Film Won: Grand Prix for a Feature Film
  • Annecy International Animated Film Festival, France (9 – 15 June, 2024)
    Feature Film Competition – Contrechamp Won: Contrechamp Grand Prix
  • Seoul Indie-Anifest, Republic of Korea (26 September – 1 October, 2024)
    Mirinae Road – Feature Film Competition Won: Mirinae Grand Prix

Password




Press materials

EPK: Click here

EPK – basics: Click here

Stills, poster & directors photos: Click here

Dialogue list English, German, Spanish: Click here

Trailer: Click here

Excerpts and trailer: Click here

Press quotes

Sultana’s Dream is a film with personality, of extraordinary audiovisual strength. It is a beautiful and unique film about the search for freedom, where the fantasy itself affirms the transforming power of fiction, and with it, of cinema as a representation of dreams. A film that will most certainly deserve to be remembered in Spanish animation.”

“This depth that Sultana’s Dream addresses is interesting and important, and has a beautiful and considerable didactic value, but what shines the most is the form. The film distinguishes itself in the way Herguera and her team tell this story of domination and transformation. With wit and a certain ironic humour, through original and fascinating visual and sound materials, symbolic colours, images, music and sounds that evoke the depth of the film, they recreate the dreamlike world of Begum Rokeya’s story and build a whole imaginary full of new ideas, spaces, landscapes and characters.”
Review: Julia Olmo – Cineuropa

With its topical themes of politics, religious freedom, feminism and the environment Herguera’s well-paced and witty satire pokes subtle fun at the male-dominated society that still exists in India as Ines embarks on a peripatetic odyssey to realise her hopes and dreams in this visually captivating gem.”
Review: Meredith Taylor – Filmuforia

“magnificent and highly stylised visuals, conceived by Herguera as a way of not ‘westernising’ the story too much. This is not a film for those seeking accurate representations of real life, while the decision to use three animation techniques depending on the subject matter at the time is high risk and might threaten to break up the visual flow – but it succeeds, and there is a joy in simply watching such high-level craftsmanship unfold.”
Review: Jonathan Holland – ScreenDaily

“El sueño de la sultana nevertheless takes advantage of this narrative freedom: its different narratives can be dreamed, sung, be cinema tales. This freedom is also felt, and this is the great success of the feature film, in its impressive animation. Isabel Herguera uses different techniques that range from watercolor to paper cut through a surprising use of henna. The result is a remarkable richness and visual ambition, and contributes to make the film unpredictable. The political dimension of El sueño de la sultana is mixed with a poetry of great inventiveness.”
Review: Nicolas Bardot – Le Polyester 

“A series of images that dazzle and hypnotize”
Review: Barbara Dickson – Social Bites

“Call it utopian sci fi, or the fertile cross-pollination of women thinkers across time and space, but Sultana’s Dream takes the audience on a fantasy journey that is as delightful as it is educational.”
Review: Deborah Young – The Film Verdict

“The film starts out as a beautiful allegory of feminism, as the Sultana’s Dream story is given a colourful lease of life through a wide spectrum of exuberant, moving images. The animation techniques are varied and multilayered. This is a visually arresting movie, with simple drawings of beautiful women (resembling charcoal paintings) juxtaposed against gingerly handmade background patterns and dreamy urban landscapes.
Review: Victor Fraga – DMovies