Dream Empire

24-year-old Yana is an entrepreneuse, a young woman with sky-high ambitions for her company, which is going from strength to strength in the wake of the Chinese construction boom. And things go well until the housing bubble in Chongqing starts to burst. Her paths cross with the young filmmaker David, who makes a living as a clarinettist in one of the 'white monkey bands' that provide the entertainment at kitschy receptions. Their friendship turns into a tragicomic adventure in an overheated, cosmopolitan world of dreams and disillusionment. David has followed Yana for several years, and he is there when her conscience starts being burdened by her own role in the destructive developments in the market, when she is hired to transform remote ghost towns into 'globalised cities in rapid development' on paper, each time investors and political leaders come to visit. Through David's outside look at the at times almost surreal Chinese boom reality, 'Dream Empire' is a film about a woman's stubborn fight to carve out a place for herself in the world.