Her voice is soft and plaintive, her words a slurry of apologies. Illusion Travels by Boxcar shows what happens when a woman who has been a homeless alcoholic for many years returns to the children she had abandoned. Unable to hide from her past, she is forced to contemplate the wounded life and its wake of wreckage. Illusion explores uncharted territories in the margins around us every day, in every city, in a direct cinema documentary where the filmmaker himself is caught in the vortex of other people’s nightmares.

Update 3/13/2010: Hi. Editing finished (but gotta pop in some extra narration). Working on the score—I decided to just do it myself——hoping to finish final with music in April, one year from previews. So it takes me a long freekin’ time to do anything, I know.

Note: The original working title of the film, Saving Patty, has been changed to Illusion Travels by Boxcar, a reworking of the title of an old Mexican Bunuel film.

—John Dentino