Dreams in Nightmares Review: BFI Flare Festival 2025

Three friends make the best of a reluctant roadtrip in Dreams in Nightmares

Dreams in Nightmares is the second feature from American writer/director Shatara Michelle Ford, a road movie following a group of black queer femmes travelling across the Mid-West, it counterpoints the precarious reality of their lived experiences in modern America with the cautious hope of a true found family.

California based Z (Denée Benton) and Brooklynite Tasha (Sasha Compère) have both just been laid off from their stable, professional jobs. Floundering and low on funds they meet up in New York for a wild night out with struggling poet and sometime cleaner Lauren (a hugely entertaining Dezi Bing.) After realising that none of them have heard from their fourth friend, Kel (Mars Storm Rucker) in several months, the three set out in Tasha’s car for a mammoth roadtrip to find them.

With Kel having fallen completely off the radar the trio retrace their last known steps, stopping off with a friend in Pittsburgh, an ex-girlfriend in Iowa and with Kel’s estranged parents in Kansas. Having left behind the relative safety of their liberal home cities, the three are naturally apprehensive about what they might encounter on the road. But as much as their journey informs them about life in the places they visit, it also encourages them each to question their own lives, the space they are taking up in the world, and if any of it is truly making them happy.

At an eloquently given post-screening Q&A Ford waxed lyrical about their love for the films of Mike Leigh and their desire to create a film that was more about ‘themes’ than ‘plot’ – and that is felt at times, Dreams in Nightmares meanders along with no real urgency to find the mysterious Kel despite their friend’s genuine worry for them. It stops and starts at moments that caught Ford’s interest – a poem delivered by a drag queen, a painfully awkward dinner party – and zips past days and miles in the blink of an eye.

Dreams in Nightmares can sometimes feel like a series of vignettes stitched together rather than a character or plot driven story, but at the same time the characters are so brilliantly drawn that much is explained and understood without the need for clunky exposition. These friends leap off the screen as fully formed, believable, lovable characters and the platonic and romantic relationships portrayed are universally warm and hopeful things.

There is ambitious scope and scale from Ford on a microbudget, and not all of the elements quite work. A fair chunk of time is given to more esoteric scenes as Z muses on what her ancestors would want for her, falling into dream sequences and fantasies that don’t quite amass to the deeper sentiment they are trying to convey. While Ford’s artistry is clearly intentional and they do a wonderful job of building a ‘vibe,’ a leaner editing process might have served audiences better, as the film definitely feels overlong by the time it reaches its somewhat anticlimactic conclusion.

Sometimes funny, sometimes frustrated and always queer as fuck, Dreams in Nightmares is a genuinely fresh entry into the pantheon of great American road movies. Sure to resonate profoundly with those who see themselves on screen, it manages to capture universal hopes and fears while still centring marginalised voices in a powerful way. Shatara Michelle Ford is one to watch.

Dreams in Nightmares played as part of the BFI Flare London LGTBQIA+ Film Festival. Wider release details TBC