Dormilón — Where Dreams, Shadows, and Stop Motion Collide
In Dormilón, director Olivia Marie Valdez crafts a surreal stop-motion dreamscape that blurs the lines between fantasy and fear. The film follows a lonely janitor who lives inside an abandoned theater, escaping into the only place where he still shines—the world of his dreams. Each night, he records these visions, splicing together imagined moments of glory. But as his nightmares begin to invade his waking world, his pursuit of perfection takes a darker turn.
The nine-minute short, told entirely without dialogue, uses puppet animation to explore themes of self-image, performance, and repression. The silent setting of the empty theater becomes both sanctuary and prison, echoing the inner world of a man haunted by the pieces of himself he tries to cut away.
“Dormilón is about the struggle between creation and destruction, the tension between what we show and what we hide,” Valdez explains through her AFI FEST profile. “In animation, every frame is intentional—just like every moment we choose to remember or erase.”
The film’s visual language is striking—gritty textures, flickering lights, and meticulously detailed puppets conjure a world that feels tangible yet ghostly. Cinematographer S. Lakmé Iyengar captures this duality through handcrafted miniature sets and a theatrical play of shadow and light, while composer Aaron Montreal’s score weaves through the film like a half-remembered melody from a fading dream.
Produced by Katherine Martinez DeLeón under the Film Independent Project Involve program, Dormilón represents a new generation of filmmakers embracing the tactile intimacy of stop motion to tell deeply psychological stories. The film stars Tomas Valdez as the silent dreamer whose quest for self-recognition spirals into a haunting metaphor for the creative process itself.
After premiering on the festival circuit—including screenings at Slamdance, SIFF, the Vashon Island Film Festival, and AFI FEST, Dormilón has captured attention for its poetic blend of visual storytelling and emotional depth. It stands as a reminder of the unique power of stop motion to embody the texture of human emotion—frame by painstaking frame.
Dormilón invites us to confront our own fears, to look at the film strips we’ve cut away, and to ask what we lose when we hide from the dream.
