
Dream Empire: China's Real Estate Bubble
In 2012, at the peak of China's biggest building boom in history, a young woman named Yana decides to cash in. She starts a company that rents out fake Western employees and fake foreign clients to Chinese property developers, staging phony business meetings and glamorous parties to convince buyers that empty tower blocks are already thriving international hubs. The film follows Yana as her ambitions grow from small-time hustle toward a business empire of her own, while the ghost cities behind her keep multiplying: entire districts of unsold apartments built on speculation and local government debt. Interviews with the Westerners hired to play executives and investors reveal how routine the deception has become, and how thin the line is between marketing and fraud. Director David Borenstein gets remarkable access to sales offices, model apartments, and the theater of investor tours, letting the absurdity speak for itself. What emerges is a portrait of a housing bubble sustained less by economics than by performance, and of one woman betting everything on the show continuing.