The acclaimed British documentary film-maker Kim Longinotto (Divorce Iranian Style, Sisters in Law) joins forces with director Franky Murray Brown on this pensive study of the career hopes and the cost of fame for 2018 X Factor winner Dalton Harris. Jamaican-born Harris endured an abusive childhood that left him all but estranged from his mother. His success during The X Factor reopens the wounds of his early life, and adds a few more for good measure as he becomes the target of vitriolic homophobic abuse from his home country.
The film’s handling of Harris’s embattled mental health is admirably compassionate; its observational approach captures, with uncomfortable intimacy, an increasingly isolated and vulnerable young man who lacks any kind of support system aside from the management company hoping to cash in on his talent. Dalton’s Dream prompts troubling questions about the ethics of feeding sensitive young people into the voracious celebritainment machine.