Dreaming of You: The Making of the Coral is the story of six working-class Wirral teens who shook the British Indie music scene. James Slater’s documentary will hold its premiere at this year’s Sheffield Doc Fest on June 21st, with further screenings available. Book Tickets.
The Coral formed on the Wirral, Merseyside, in the mid-nineties. Emerging from Liverpool’s vibrant late-’90s garage rock scene, they quickly caught the attention of Alan Wills, who, captivated by their eclectic sound, founded DeltaSonic Records around them. Their 2001 debut single, Shadows Fall, earned national recognition, and they were soon hailed as pioneers of a new wave of rock ’n’ roll energy—an antidote to the stagnation of the post-Britpop era.
Their self-titled 2002 debut album, featuring the now-iconic single Dreaming of You, was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize and named the best album of the year by NME. They followed it up with Magic and Medicine (2003), a critical and commercial triumph that topped the UK charts and produced four Top 20 singles, including Pass It On, Bill McCai, and Don’t Think You’re the First.
Over three decades, The Coral have remained one of the UK’s most enduring and consistently inventive bands. They have released eleven studio albums, including The Invisible Invasion (2005), Roots & Echoes (2007), and Coral Island (2021), blending elements of psychedelic folk and Garage folk, with their own unique brand of haunting, dreamlike melodies. Their influence can be heard in the work of later British indie acts such as Arctic Monkeys and Blossoms, who credit The Coral with shaping their sound.
Still together after 30 years, The Coral continue to evolve while maintaining their blend of melody, storytelling, and their experimental edge, securing their place as one of their generation’s most distinctive and influential British bands.
Dreaming of You: The Making of The Coral follows the story of six childhood outsiders as they transform into one of the new millennium’s most influential British guitar bands. Narrated by the band, the film is an immersive experience that creatively combines reconstruction, archive footage, and animation to capture the early ’00s through the eyes of six northern teenagers, who created their own strange, endlessly creative escapist universe together. As the friends leave their sleepy seaside hometown of Hoylake in pursuit of musical glory, the spotlight eventually finds them, but is it fame they’re after, or is it just being together?
With appearances from iconic indie bands The Lightning Seeds, The Zutons and Tramp Attack, Dreaming of You: The Making of The Coral is a dreamscape of friendship, fame and fuzzy guitars.
Speaking ahead of the Sheffield Doc Fest premiere, director James Slater said, “I wanted Dreaming of You to be an immersive experience—one that transports us back to Northwest England in the late ’90s and early 2000s. …The visual aesthetic of the film is further enhanced by the formats used to shoot both the GVs and reconstructions—Mini DV, Hi-8, 16mm, and 8mm—all mediums that were used to document the band at the time. This rich visual tapestry is accompanied not only by the band’s musical archive but also by a layered sound design that further immerses us in the era, embedding us deeply within the time and place.”
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