Dreaming Against The World

Francisco Bello and Timothy Sternberg

Release year: 2008

Run time: 35 mins

Film type: Documentary

DREAMING AGAINST THE WORLD tells the story of Mu Xin, one of the most original yet largely unknown artists of the 20th century. While illegally imprisoned during China’s Cultural Revolution, Mu Xin endangered his life to secretly write and paint. If caught he risked execution, but it was against these perilous odds that he created an astonishing body of work that merged East and West, the ancient and the modern, terror and transcendence. It was through his artistic faith that he survived, while so many others did not. A documentary portrait filmed on location in China and New York by OSCAR® Nominated filmmakers Tim Sternberg and Francisco Bello, DREAMING AGAINST THE WORLD is the story of Mu Xin and his incredible commitment to his artistic vision.

Francisco Bello is an Academy Award® Nominated and Emmy® winning filmmaker. After entry level work on films by Francis Ford Coppola, Kevin Smith and Michael Moore, with director Tim Sternberg, Francisco shot and produced SALIM BABA, a 2008 Best Short Documentary Oscar® and 2009 Emmy Nominee. He then produced and edited WAR DON DON, winner of the 2010 SXSW Special Jury Prize and two Emmy nominations. Additional highlights include editing the SXSW Narrative Grand Jury winning MOST BEAUTIFUL ISLAND, the Peabody winning BEST KEPT SECRET, the Emmy nominated THE INTERPRETERS, Barbara Kopple’s Emmy nominated DESERT ONE, Emmy winner 16 SHOTS and the triple Emmy winning THE FIRST WAVE. Reuniting with Tim Sternberg, he co-directed DREAMING AGAINST THE WORLD, seen at the Telluride Film Festival, the closing night of DocNYC and the Asia Society. He served on the board of the Karen Schemer Film Editing Fellowship and is a member of A.C.E and the Documentary Branch of A.M.P.A.S.
Timothy Sternberg is an Oscar® and Emmy® nominated filmmaker and editor. After apprenticing in the editing rooms of Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese among others he directed, with Francisco Bello, the film SALIM BABA which was nominated for an Oscar® for Best Short Documentary at the 2008 Academy Awards and played at over 200 festivals worldwide including Sundance, Telluride, IDFA, Tribeca and the Cleveland Film Festival where it won the Julius Epstein Humanitarian Award. After airing on HBO it received an Emmy® Nomination for Outstanding Culture Programming. He co-directed HBO’s EL ESPÍRITU DE LA SALSA, which premiered at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival. He edited director Brendan Toller’s feature documentary DANNY SAYS that premiered at the 2015 SXSW Film Festival. DREAMING AGAINST THE WORLD, co-directed with Francisco Bello, had its US festival premiere at the 2015 Telluride Film Festival, the closing night of DocNYC and the Asia Society. In addition he has edited THE BIT PLAYER and was additional editor on PARTICLE FEVER under Walter Murch for director Mark Levinson as well as scores of hours of television.

Film Database

Dreaming Against The World