Synopsis

Waking Dream weaves together the stories of undocumented young people as they sit in limbo between deportation and a path to citizenship. In 2012, DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) gave 800,000 undocumented young people, who had been in the U.S. since they were small children, a chance to work legally, go to college, start businesses, and pursue the "American Dream." When the program was rescinded by the Trump administration in 2017, DACA recipients suddenly risked losing it all. Waking Dream follows the unfolding fate of six of these young people as they fight for legal status in the U.S., struggle with the deportation of family members, and pursue their dreams in a country that is trying harder and harder to push them out. They know the wide eyed hopes of their younger citizen siblings and children, as well as the pain and sacrifice of their undocumented parents. They know their fate must go one direction and they are fighting for their future in America.

Waking Dream weaves together the stories of undocumented young people as they sit in limbo between deportation and a path to citizenship. In 2012, DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) gave 800,000 undocumented young people, who had been in the U.S. since they were small children, a chance to work legally, go to college, start businesses, and pursue the "American Dream." When the program was rescinded by the Trump administration in 2017, DACA recipients suddenly risked losing it all. Waking Dream follows the unfolding fate of six of these young people as they fight for legal status in the U.S., struggle with the deportation of family members, and pursue their dreams in a country that is trying harder and harder to push them out. They know the wide eyed hopes of their younger citizen siblings and children, as well as the pain and sacrifice of their undocumented parents. They know their fate must go one direction and they are fighting for their future in America.