Dreams and disappointment lie at the heart of Buddhadeb Dasgupta's moving Chased by Dreams, a meditation on hope in the lives of three ordinary people.

Paresh is a projectionist who takes educational films to the community around the vast expanse of India. Lonely, he falls in love with the image of a girl in one of his films, who he dreams of finding. Chapel is the temporary driver who takes Paresh about his work. Chapel dreams of finding wealth in Dubai, but a faked passport is his only ticket to hope. One day Paresh and Chapel give a lift to Amina, a young Muslim woman who lost her husband in a riot after they moved to India. Amina's dream is to return to her homeland, but this is a fraught path for a woman with no papers and no money. The journey the trio shares is one of peril, and their dreams remain but chimeras.

Beyond the quiet devastation of life's unfulfilled dreams, Dasgupta (A Tale of a Naughty Girl, MIFF 03) creates a film of subtle and personal atmosphere, poetic beauty and of allegorical proportion.