Paprika

Paprika (2006) is Satoshi Kon's anime science-fiction film you can watch online on iFILM. A device called the DC Mini lets therapists step into their patients' dreams and record them. Three of the units are stolen, and the line between sleep and waking starts to dissolve.

By day, Dr. Atsuko Chiba is composed and reserved. By night she works as Paprika, a red-haired sprite who walks through other people's dreams and pulls them out of their nightmares. Once the stolen DC Mini lands in the wrong hands, dreams begin leaking into the waking world: an absurd parade of dolls, lanterns and chattering refrigerators marches through the city, and anyone can catch another mind's delusion. Paprika and her colleagues have to recover the device before the dreaming swallows everyone.

This was Kon's final feature, made at Madhouse from Yasutaka Tsutsui's novel, with a score by Susumu Hirasawa whose parade theme took on a life of its own. Its dream logic is often compared to Christopher Nolan's Inception. Stream Paprika (2006) online on iFILM.