In the near future, the government taxes your dreams. A weary auditor assesses the dreams of an eccentric old woman who has recorded thousands on VHS tapes. Somewhere in the stacks, he falls in love with the young woman she was.

STRAWBERRY MANSION (2021) was written and directed by Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney, who built the dreaming world by hand. Audley stars and Birney performs the creatures.

They called it a twenty-million-dollar concept shot on an indie budget. It was filmed on video and transferred to 16mm so it looks like a lost rental-store tape from 1985, and its saxophone-playing frog men and tattered VHS monsters were made with stop-motion and puppetry instead of a render farm.

Underneath the whimsy sits a colder idea. Dreams here are not only taxed. They have been infiltrated by advertising. The last private place a person had, the inside of their own sleep, has become a marketplace.

It looks like it cost a few hundred dollars and a few thrift-store runs, yet feels as boundless as anything at the multiplex.

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Strawberry Mansion was produced on a micro-budget as a highly collaborative, DIY indie project. Following its premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, the movie was acquired by Music Box Films for its North American theatrical and digital release, while Alief handled international sales to secure global distribution.