After its World Premiere at the 2019 SXSW, Jeremy Teicher’s movie Olympic Dreams made its Minnesota premiere at TCFF. The movie stars Nick Kroll as Ezra, a dentist who’s come to volunteer his dentistry skills at the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea. It also stars Alexi Pappas as Penelope, an American cross-country skier who has qualified to complete at the 2018 Olympic Winter Games but doesn’t know any of the other athletes in the athlete village and also feels awkward around most of them anyways. Penelope is disappointed after a less than desirable finish in her competition and meets Ezra in the cafeteria of the athletes village and a friendship starts to develop between the athlete and dentist, who is more than ten years her elder.

When Penelope tries to pursue Ezra as something more than a friend at first, Ezra rejects her pursuit, telling her that he has a sort-of girlfriend at home. This leads Penelope and Ezra down a rocky path, filled with spending some time apart, and Penelope meeting another athlete — real life free style skier Gus Kenworthy, who makes sure to quickly inform Penelope that he is not interested in being more than friends with her since he is gay. Gus helps Penelope and Ezra reconnect and they end up going outside the Olympic Village on a tour of the local culture, sights and restaurants of PyeongChang. But will they ever become anything more than friends? To find out, you’ll have to catch the movie from IFC Films when it come out early next year.

Olympic Dreams is the first narrative film ever shot in a real Olympic Athlete Village — the entire film was shot on location during the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018. The director, Jeremy Teicher, also acted as the movie’s cinematographer, and sound recorder in addition to directing the movie, according to his website. It is charming, funny at time and beautifully-shot. It reminded me of why I love the Olympics and makes me think that anything is possible when attending the Olympic Games, including starting a physical relationship with someone. Gus Kenworthy shares in the movie (*unclear if this was real or not) that one of his buddies lost his virginity at the last Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. I had a blast watching this movie and came out of it with a huge smile.

The movie was written by the trio of Alexi Pappas, Jeremy Teicher, and Nick Kroll; and mostly succeeded in guiding this gentle love story in the backdrop of one of the most well know world-wide sporting events we have in the history of sports.

– Review by Vitali Gueron

Have you seen OLYMPIC DREAMS? Well, what did you think? 

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