After losing her job, Z (Denée Benton) embarks on a trip across the American Midwest. Together with her two closest friends, they search for another friend of theirs who has seemingly disappeared off the grid. In each city, the three queer Black femmes face new threats that test their priorities, causing personal and ideological fractures to emerge. With their second film, Shatara Michelle Ford (Test Pattern) puts their own singular stamp on the American road movie. 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.

2026 / 17 mins / USA

English with English subtitles

Director: Mars (Marianne) Verrone

Producer: Mars (Marianne) Verrone

Editor: Mars (Marianne) Verrone

Cinematographer: Stella Rae Binion

Sound Recording: Mars (Marianne) Verrone

Additional Sound Recording: Ripley Barnes

Post Sound Services: Nocturnal Sound

Re-Recording Mixer: Eli Cohn

Sound Editors: Jack Sasner, Sam Berliner-Sachs

Music: Mars (Marianne) Verrone

Editorial Consultants: César Martínez Barba, Yana Nafysa Dombrowsky-M’Baye

Lab Services: Colorlab 

Colorist: Mars (Marianne) Verrone

Mars Verrone (Director, Producer, Editor, Composer) 

Mars Verrone is an award-winning filmmaker, musician, and educator from Los Angeles, CA, currently based in Brooklyn, NY. As a first-time producer, Mars produced Oscar-shortlisted feature documentary UNION, (dir. Stephen Maing, Brett Story) which premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Documentary Competition and won a special jury prize for “The Art of Change.” The film was distributed by PBS POV and the Criterion Channel. Mars received a Cinema Eye Honors Award for “Outstanding Achievement in Production.” In 2022, Mars directed and produced award-winning short documentary GOLDEN VOICE, which continues to be programmed at LGBTQ+ festivals and events across the globe. Mars is a Sundance Documentary Producers Fellow, NBC Original Voices Artist Mentor and Fellow, PGA Create Fellow, Firelight Media Impact Fellow, Brown Girls Doc Mafia Sustainable Artist Fellow, Dear Producer Mentee, and was selected for DOC NYC’S 2024 “40 Under 40” cohort. Their work has been supported by Sundance Institute, Ford Foundation, Field of Vision, and the International Documentary Association, among others.

Stella Rae Binion (Director of Photography) 

Stella Rae Binion (they/she) aspires to breathe underwater, embodying an ongoing project of “undrowning” (after Alexis Pauline Gumbs) and speculations of Black loving continuance. Stella Rae is a Chicago-based poet, filmmaker, 16mm cinematographer, printmaker, and bodywork practitioner. Their practice includes poetic research, investigations within fugitivity and the Black outdoors, honor work as prayer and divination, witnessing through language and imaging, and the celebration and protection of Black queer people. Stella Rae received a BA in Media Theory and Creative Writing from Brown University in 2023.