de Sien celebrates Black Achievement Month with Dreams in Nightmares, curated by Ayden Carlo.
With their second film, Shatara Michelle Ford (Test Pattern) puts their singular stamp on the American road movie. Dreams in Nightmares, which stars Denée Benton (The Gilded Age) and Jasmin Savoy Brown (Yellowjackets, Scream 7) follows a group of queer friends in their mid-30s navigating love, identity, and belonging across America. Anchored in themes of chosen family and self-discovery, the film blends humor and emotional depth against the backdrop of a journey through the Midwest and beyond. Dreams in Nightmares is an expansive and tender ode to the chosen family and to the radical act of claiming space to dream—and to exist—in an increasingly fraught country.
This program is curated by Ayden Carlo.
About director Shatara Michelle Ford
Shatara Michelle Ford (they/she/their) is an African American filmmaker born in Arkansas, raised in Missouri, and based in Los Angeles. Ford’s films explore memory, perception, alienation, isolation, America and Americanness; all the while interrogating systems of oppression through characters who must live, survive, thrive, or languish within them. Ford’s script, Queen Elizabeth, was featured on the 2017 Black List. Their debut feature TEST PATTERN was released by Kino Lorber in 2021 to critical acclaim, landing on over a dozen Best of 2021 lists. It received three Gotham Award nominations including Best Feature, four Spirit Award Nominations including Best First Feature, an NAACP Image Award nomination, and won prizes from San Francisco Film Critics Circle, Austin Film Critics Association, Women Film Critics Circle, New Orleans Film Festival, and BlackStar Film Festival. Additionally, Ford was awarded the prestigious New Generation prize by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and is a 2021 Pew Fellow.
