Waking Up In Dreamland
In Pre-Production
LOGLINE
Two sisters travel to Sicily to find their Campagna family roots still thrive there; then re-trace their grandparent’s immigrant journey to Chicago during Prohibition where the sisters unravel family secrets of gang warfare, bootlegging, death and imprisonment.
SYNOPSIS
In 1891, Giovanni Campagna left his pregnant wife behind in Sicily to find his way to riches in Chicago. From a poor fruit peddler, he rose to one of the richest and most influential men in Little Italy, raising 7 children. But by the end of his life he had lost everything, including three of his sons, to gang warfare and racial prejudice.
In the second of their feature-length documentaries tracing family ties (following The Abandoned Bride in 2017) two sisters — Giovanni’s great granddaughters Deb Havens and Lynette Doele — explore the roots of their family tree and all the entwined secrets, adventures, and tragedies revealed. They visit Sicily, the point of departure for their immigrant grandparents well over a century ago, to explore the impact of their ancestor’s immigrant tragedy on their family lives in the 21st Century.
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