Dreams in Nightmares had its international premiere in the Panorama section at this year’s Berlinale and will have its UK premiere at BFI Flare.
Dreams in Nightmares: the title alone of Shatara Michelle Ford’s new film carries a strong, undisputable message about the Black queer experience in America. However, this message is only further elevated given recent events as Ford unpicks the stark historical and contemporary nightmares surrounding a mythological American dream. The United States of America has long built strong, resilient communities of queer culture that have defied the restrictions surrounding them; these communities have offered love, protection and hope to many, even as nightmares played out outside of the community walls due to intolerance, racism and oppression.
Witty, poetic and sharp, Ford’s fascinating road trip movie is about the strength these communities, big and small, hold in a nation that continues to become further segregated and opaque; it is about the power and importance of friendship and the uncomfortable truth that the American dream only ever applied to people who fit the excepted cultural, racial and sexual norms of The United States of America as four queer Black women attempt to navigate their dreams within the nightmares of a country that, at times, feels trapped in the shadow of a civil war fought over 160 years ago.
Z (Denée Benton) has a recurring dream that eats away at her, its meaning opaque yet urgent: a message from her ancestors that she knows carries a deep meaning. Z is surrounded by darkness in her dream, with only a door in front of her offering light and hope. Through that door, lush green fields lead to a new world, but something stops her from walking through it, even though she knows it holds promise. Doubt? Uncertainty? Or fear of the unknown? She knows she must step through that door, but she wakes every time she gets close.
Everything in Z’s life feels like it has reached a crossroads: her boyfriend (Charlie Barnett) wants to add her name to the deeds of the house they share, and she has just been made redundant from her job lecturing at a Los Angeles arts college. The dreams Z once held now feel hollow as she questions the world around her and her place within it as a strong, black, queer woman. Meanwhile, one of Z’s closest and oldest friends in Brooklyn faces a similar battle. Tasha (Sasha Compère) has also been made redundant from a job she worked hard to secure, a job she changed herself to fit into, hiding the parts of her queer black identity that she knew could and would impact her opportunities. Her flatmate and friend Lauren (Dezi Bing) holds down several low-paid jobs to help with the rent, but all the same, Tasha and Lauren know life is about to change.
As these old college friends reach the same crossroads, they gravitate towards each other in attempting to navigate the new path ahead. However, one person is missing from this urgent and timely reunion: Kel (Mars Rucker). Neither Z, Tasha, nor Lauren has heard from Kel for months, and she isn’t responding to their calls; therefore, the women do what true friends always do: they set off in search of their sister, travelling across a disUnited States where vibrant queer communities only exist in cities while rediscovering the power of the found family they built during college.
Ford is interested in what it means to be a Black, proud and queer woman in an ever-increasingly polarised America, but while Dreams in Nightmares is, in essence, a discussion on contemporary North America and the impact of the hyper-masculinity, racism, homophobia and transphobia that flows through a divided land, it is also a character study of how four individuals navigate those political and social realities. Ford isn’t interested in offering easy answers, broad-brush discussions or simple narrative arcs. Instead, she is interested in each character’s feelings, motivations and needs, even if they now differ and clash within the found family they created in college.
Dreams in Nightmares may feel slow to start, but it quickly picks up pace, leaving you breathless and transfixed as it places the queer black female experience of a fragmented United States centre stage while carefully walking the fine line between melancholy and hope. With rich, detailed and natural central performances from Benton, Compère, Bing and Rucker to the deep, colourful and dreamlike cinematography of Ludovica Isidori, Ford’s exquisite screenplay never allows despair to overtake belief in something better, delivering a beautifully crafted road trip that never seeks to define its final destination. From the joy of underground queer poetry nights in Pittsburgh to the revelation that sometimes your best life can only be found outside of the country you call home, Z’s dream finally transitions from immobility to movement as she steps through the brightly lit door into something better. One only hopes that the United States can achieve something similar in the future.
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