We are often told to follow our dreams, until the dream involves becoming an artist. That is the starting point of The Cost of Dreaming, the first feature documentary by the Barcelona-based filmmaker, actress and singer Eva Bukovenszki. It has its worldwide online premiere on YouTube on Saturday 7 November 2026 at 20:00 CET, preceded by a live pre-show at 19:00 CET on Eva Bukovenszki’s channel.
The film runs for about 90 minutes and is spoken in Spanish, English and Catalan, with English subtitles. It follows five young creatives across music, painting, filmmaking, illustration and performance, and keeps returning to the same questions. Who gets encouraged to pursue art professionally? Who has enough financial security to keep creating before the work becomes sustainable? How much do class, access, family expectations and professional connections decide whose ambitions are treated as realistic? The press materials list money, nepotism and access, mental health, and the growing influence of artificial intelligence on creative industries among its subjects.
Official premiere poster, The Cost of Dreaming (2026). Courtesy of Eva Bukovenszki.
A film made without a budget
The detail that gives the project its edge is how it was made. Bukovenszki says The Cost of Dreaming was made with €0 in dedicated production budget and no external financing. She filmed the whole feature on a smartphone and handled development, directing, producing, filming, editing, post-production and marketing herself, while also appearing in it.
She does not present this as a stunt. “It was simply the way I could afford to make the project,” she explained when she first wrote to us. For her, that experience sharpened an idea that sits at the centre of the film: democratising creative tools and democratising creative careers are two completely different things. Anyone can make a film with a phone, record music in a bedroom or publish artwork online, she argues, but access to the tools does not provide rent, time, stable income or professional connections, nor the ability to survive years of uncertainty while the work becomes sustainable. The press kit puts it in one line: a documentary about the cost of pursuing art, made by an artist who could not afford the cost of making one.
Five people, one question
Bukovenszki is also one of the five participants and the narrative thread that connects them. She is 22, a graduate in Audiovisual Communication, and has been performing since early childhood: acting from the age of three or four, then singing and dancing. In 2018 she began publishing her own content online. Her own ambitions, she says, lie particularly in music and acting, so she is exploring the questions while living them, not observing from outside.
The other four participants named in the film’s credits are Sara Martínez, João Cedeño, Ariadna Marqués Samartino and Elizabeth Ibarra. João is a musician. Elizabeth Ibarra is a painter and visual artist who moved from Chile to Spain to pursue art and also works with art therapy. Sara Martínez is a filmmaker facing the realities of entering the industry after graduation, including nepotism and professional access. Ariadna is an illustrator and graphic designer whose family had ingrained in her the belief that illustration could not provide a viable future.
All four agreed to be quoted here. The Catalan and Spanish quotations were translated into English by Bukovenszki.
João, musician: “The cost of my dream is to break and rebuild myself every day as I evolve. To become who I’m meant to be without ever losing who I am.”
Ariadna Marqués Samartino, design student, speaking in Catalan: “You work twice as hard to achieve half as much, but this part, this creative process, is absolutely worth it.”
Elizabeth Ibarra, painter and visual artist, speaking in Spanish: “Pursuing my dream has demanded a great deal of patience and perseverance along a path that still offers me no certainty. I’ve had to trust blindly, even when I sometimes question what I’m doing so far away from home. And yet, my dream has given me the most authentic moments of my life, moments that fill my soul and my heart in a way I can’t put into words.”
Sara Martínez, filmmaker: “For me, my dream has given me both my purpose and my burden. I know who I want to become and what I want in life, but it’s becoming hard for me to actually build and imagine a real life path that leads me to my dream. It’s a tough and unstable industry with passionate people that are working in it because they can’t imagine their lives working on something else. Once you know that you love stories, you can’t detach yourself from them. That is both a dream and a punishment.”
Martínez adds: “At 14, I knew that my life purpose was to be a storyteller. My passion extended to both film and literature. Since I was a child, stories and art have given me company when I was most alone in life, when I felt that no one in the world felt the way I was.”
Beyond the five
The film does not stay within one city. Young creatives from backgrounds across Europe, Africa, Asia, North America and Latin America contribute short pieces answering a single question: what is the greatest sacrifice you have made for your art or to pursue your artistic dream? One young filmmaker, for example, speaks about leaving Nigeria for Canada and risking stability to pursue his ambition of becoming a film director.
Premiere and what comes next
The film had its physical premiere in Barcelona on 30 October, in the theatre of the C.C. Can Felipa community centre (capacity 200), with a Q&A and a discussion with the participants. Further Barcelona screenings are being developed, and Bukovenszki plans to take the film to other cities in Spain and abroad through 2027.
The project also reaches beyond the screen. Bukovenszki is collaborating with 42nd Street, a Manchester-based mental health charity supporting young people, on conversations about creativity and mental health, which she also discusses personally in the film. The press kit says further partnerships with mental health organisations are being explored.
Teaser poster, The Cost of Dreaming (2026). Courtesy of Eva Bukovenszki.
How to watch:The Cost of Dreaming premieres on YouTube on Saturday 7 November 2026, with a live pre-show at 19:00 CET and the film at 20:00 CET, on the channel Eva Bukovenszki. Project website: thecostofdreaming.my.canva.site.
This article is based on the director’s press kit, her written answers and the participants’ own statements. Poster images are courtesy of Eva Bukovenszki.
