Even in conversation, it’s easy to see why Shatara Michelle Ford is such a good director. The “Test Pattern” and “Dreams in Nightmares” filmmaker is clear, direct, goal-oriented, and focused. Asked by IndieWire their (Ford, who is nonbinary, uses they/them/she pronouns) hopes for this year’s Berlin Film Festival, where their sophomore feature will screen in the Panorama section and continue to seek distribution, Ford doesn’t fuss: “Buy my movie, give me a job.”
Those two things shouldn’t be tough for a film as good as “Dreams in Nightmares” and for a filmmaker as exciting as Ford, but Ford is well-aware of how tenuous the American independent film market is these days. Case in point: the film actually premiered at the BlackStar Film Festival on August 1, 2024. Berlin is only its second stop.
Ford’s “Dreams in Nightmares” follows four long-time friends, all queer Black women in their mid-thirties, as they embark on a road trip that’s also something of a thriller. Ford tucks major ideas and themes into the stunning feature, one that functions both as an intimate exploration of identity and a rallying cry for a new kind of world. While the potential for that sort of ambition could lead another filmmaker into academic, dry territory, Ford’s film is the opposite: alive, surprising, funny, shocking, and true.
Ford’s “Test Pattern,” a standout debut from 2019, also premiered at BlackStar. The film was distributed by Kino Lorber and went on to be nominated for three Gotham Awards, including Best Picture and three Independent Spirit Awards, including Best First Feature. Billed by this writer as a “perceptive look at sexual assault and relationships,” Ford’s film was one of the finest of the year, and it’s no surprise their follow-up is just as good.
But the road hasn’t been easy. Such is the life of an independent American filmmaker. Yet, over the course of a wide-ranging, hour-long interview, Ford often came back to that idea that it doesn’t have to be that way, that the system needs to change, can change, and they’ve got ideas as to how to make that happen.
In the days leading up to the film’s Berlinale premiere, Ford was characteristically open and thoughtful. Consider a basic question: how are you doing?
“I’m OK, I don’t know, it’s like, what is good, what is well in the context of what we’re sitting in this moment?,” Ford said. “But above all, I’m also just very, very, very tired, which I think is the way it goes when movies are made the way that I make them.”
The way Ford makes films is scrappy and deeply considered, emotionally taxing and edifying, on tight budgets, with close-knit cast and crew. It wasn’t always going to be that way. Well, not that exact way.
“I made ‘Test Pattern’ because I was trying to get another [film] made and [that was] the ‘right way’ within the system to do that, and I was just like, ‘This doesn’t make sense,’” Ford said. “I feel like I’m always straddling the two worlds of my own process and style that’s grown out of necessity, and the actual romantic dream of how I actually wanted to make movies and navigate the system. I’ve never been given the opportunity to do the other thing, but the work [I’ve made] is arguably more interesting and more alive.”
Initially, Ford said, they dreamed of a career like those of their heroes David Fincher, Steven Soderbergh, Robert Altman, and John Cassavetes. After they made “Test Pattern,” Ford said, they thought, “Oh, I’m about to get my ‘Panic Room.’ I’m like, ‘Where’s my “Insomnia”?’ I am looking for that mid-budget adult thing, with a level of thriller and action and great actors and I know I can do that, and that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do on one level. But the artist part of me emerged out of trying to figure out how to do that thing. So now I’m in this bifurcated space always.”
When Ford realized their “Panic Room” was not coming, they had to figure out how to make their own opportunities (again). Far easier said than done. In 2022, Ford said, they were “really, really, really fucking broke,” terrified of what was coming with the strikes, cognizant of the lack of sales out of other festivals, and constantly hearing conversations that hinged on one perpetual question: “Is independent film dead?”
They didn’t want it to be. More than anything, Ford wanted to make another movie, and was eager to find a way to do just that. “What can I do with what little resources that I have, the little juice that I got outside of ‘Test Pattern’? I have agents now, they’ve introduced me to a lot of people, a lot of people have said they want to work with me,” Ford said.
But the money people didn’t always jibe with Ford’s ideas, so they opted to pursue a somewhat wild idea. “I was looking at certain numbers and my producing partner Pin-Chun Liu and I were like, there’s a financial sweet spot that we can sit in in which we could probably get money from the financiers who already say they want to support me and try to make another film the same way we did it last time,” they said. “I just went to different financiers, and I was like, ‘Hey, you said you want to give me money. I have an idea for a movie. I’m never giving you a script, but I am up for you giving me whatever you feel like losing.’”
Wait, never give them a script? It was a three-pronged process, by Ford’s telling. “I was literally like, ‘I will only have three conversations with you: The first is, you have to agree that you’re going to give me money, it can be a dollar, but you must agree. The second is, I will tell you the idea, and I will tell you the kind of budget and approach. The third is, you’re going to tell me how much money you’re going to give me, and that’s it.’”
Ford put a timer on it. They had six weeks to respond. It worked. Before the strikes, the filmmaker said, they locked in four financiers. (The rest of the money? As they did with “Test Pattern,” Ford put it on their credit card.) And while Ford’s gamble paid off, it’s not something the filmmaker recommends for everyone. What they do, however, think is important is a general reevaluation of the way everything is done when it comes to independent filmmaking.
“As we talk about the state of independent filmmaking in America, honestly, [we should] all just stop and say, ‘OK, there’s these things that are happening. It sounds like we need to take some time and energy to, instead of stressing and putting all of that work into trying to jam a film or jam an event that’s not sitting well anymore, we have to redraw the whole thing,’” Ford said.
That’s where the guidelines came from. Before Ford and Liu made “Dreams in Nightmares,” they codified and shared a list of “Production Community Guidelines” that, at the time, Ford told IndieWire, “came out of our reflections after making ‘Test Pattern.’ These guidelines are expectations and openings and reminders. They are re-framers. They also aren’t perfect… but no one and nothing is. All we can do each day is try to do better.”
“If I’m working with different cast, different crew, different conditions, those things will change,” Ford said today. “But the idea was like, these are the principles for us to work with to ensure that we are drawing a different shape for the film to be successful. I’ve worked on other film sets, big, expensive, professional ones, and you watch the same things happen over and over and over again. If we had just taken a step back and really considered everything that is in front of us, we can make nimble adjustments that makes it run as it should.”
Those other productions also had something Ford never does: money to throw at the problems, instead of actually fixing them. “They flow it with cash, and we know that we’re never going to have that, so it’s all in the planning ahead of time and the structure before,” the filmmaker said. “There’s always going to be trial and error because there’s things you’re not going to be able to see. And again, that’s why the guidelines were what they were, because we’re like, we need to account for the fact that there will be mistakes.”
To make the kind of films they want to make the way they want to make, Ford knows, could be limiting. “This might be the only thing I do, which I’m fine with,” they said. “It’ll always be hard, and I’m OK with that. Everyone makes compromises at different points, and I’m just making very specific ones that I think keep me from any element of comfort. Honestly, it’s all in the movie. The body I have, the very short, dark-skinned, femme, queer body that I’m in, it is always uncomfortable, always. And I’m so used to it. So I have to find peace where I can get it and take that space to reflect again on, OK, what are the proactive things that I need to be doing?”
One proactive thing: the choice to take “Dreams in Nightmares” to BlackStar, the Philadelphia-based festival that aims to be an “annual celebration of the visual and storytelling traditions of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people from around the world.” Two days after they finished the film, Ford said, they sent it to BlackStar.
“There were a lot of convenient things for me in finishing a film in July and then giving it away in August, that releases a lot of tension and stress for me as I’m charting a path for the film,” Ford said. “You can chase festivals all fucking day, and every filmmaker has that strain and stress and pressure, especially when you’re at my level. That will kill you on its own. Therefore, you have no time to think about, wait, are there other moves that we can make to allow this film to be seen?”
And the film was seen. Ford does their own test screenings, so they knew it would work, that it would resonate, but the experience was still surprising.
“That audience crossed age groups, not everyone was gay, not everyone was Black. But it was a very strange experience for me, as someone who’s watched the film a lot and tested it a lot, to hear responses,” they said. “It was never quiet. People were always responding to the movie, which also is a very Black thing, which I love about us. The energy, it was so palpable and strong, and I was overcome.”
Not in the audience? As Ford told it, “Not a single sales-related person was in that room to get any kind of sense of temperature on the audience that was there. That is dumb. It shows what priorities actually are in Hollywood, because that just should not have happened. I never believe people never when they’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, we want to tell more stories that include underrepresented voices,’ because you’re only doing the low-hanging fruit that’s in front of you, that’s convenient at the conferences that you go to because it’s a line item in your budget. Because to really prioritize that stuff, you have to do the stuff that’s uncomfortable, that’s unusual, that doesn’t feel sanctioned or validated. You will have to walk an unknown, dark path. You just will.”
That BlackStar is different than Berlin is a given. Example: Ford likes BlackStar, and they don’t really like film festivals.
“I don’t like film festivals. I want to be very clear on the record on it, because I don’t really understand their purpose,” Ford said. “Is it a place where we discover new work and new voices and new ideas? Or is it a marketplace? For my tastes and my enjoyment, I prefer the one where we’re watching movies and we’re celebrating each other. … This is a thing again about thinking about the structure and how it doesn’t necessarily work. When we talk about the market festivals, there’s this emphasis on the audience. Hold on, the audience is a whole bunch of people at the [festival] that are already in the business. We will never know how well a movie is going to do if we do not expose it to the ‘audience’ it’s for.”
And Ford knows there is an audience for their film, and they’d love for someone at Berlin (or wherever) to get hip to that. When Ford says they want someone to buy their movie, that comes with some deeper ideas: they want someone to buy it, because it’s good and deserves to be seen.
“What I expect is that my movie gets sold, I expect, hear me out, I expect it,” Ford said. “What I’m not going to take is that my movie is bad. I know it’s not. It’s not, so therefore, buy it. The end. It’s kind of simple. No one’s going to blame this on me. No one’s going to say, ‘Oh my God, the movie didn’t sell because the movie is bad.’ Nope. That is the answer. I want it to sell.”
Ford will not be personally traveling to Berlin for the festival, but they remain fiercely attuned to what’s happening there. And, yes, clear in their aims. “Buy my movie, give me a job. Easy, really simple,” Ford said of what they want out of Berlin. “I would like a job and I would like someone, with a real strategy, to buy my movie, someone who is open to doing things a little differently, who is open to considering the shape of the movie and then building something intentionally.”
And if the film doesn’t sell?
“If I don’t get sold, fine. But I mean, everyone is being silly, if they don’t [buy it],” Ford said with a smile. “I feel like self-distribution, whatever that means in 2025, has always been an under-explored concept. And that makes sense, because the system doesn’t want you to do [it]. To believe that relying on a very weak distribution landscape, a very weak exhibition landscape, is the only way that something gets done, is not recommended for an independent filmmaker.”
Maybe that’s Ford’s next frontier. When they say they’ll call up theaters and book the film themselves, we don’t doubt it. The film is good. It deserves to be seen. Ford will make that happen, but some help sure would be nice.
“Maybe what we’re really talking about is things needing to be revamped and innovated and taking principles and ideas from each other,” Ford said. “Francis Ford Coppola wanted to make sure that ‘Megalopolis’ came out and what did he do? Soderbergh has experimented with his version of self-distribution, going as far as having a distribution company for a moment. These are all experiments, and they’re good, there’s lessons in them, and you run out of money, whatever, you get tired, whatever.”
Buy their movie. Give them a job. You will not be disappointed.
You can watch an exclusive clip of “Dreams in Nightmares” below. The film will next screen at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival, where it is seeking distribution, on Sunday, February 16.
SOURCE: IndieWire
