Nightmare Diaries, 2024

""Nightmare Diaries" is a devised film about our relationship with our dreaming selves. A dancer, plagued by nightmares of a shrouded visitor, tracks down a reclusive psychotherapist who can communicate through dreams. A former patient, harmed by the doctor's process, arrives to stop him—instead, she decides to help, seeing hope in this dancer, where the doctor sees redemption. But the dancer has her own path to take. The script was developed in collaboration with the actors over weeks of rehearsals. They contributed dream journals, improvised scenes that became scripted dialogue, and workshopped characters tirelessly. Dancers rehearsed separately, collaboratively devising the choreography. I wanted the film to be a meeting point of many of my obsessions: negotiations with fear, the hypnagogic state, collaborative storytelling, dance on screen, emotion triumphing over rationality. I did not know if they would coexist, and I still don't. I suppose that's up to anyone who chooses to watch the film." -- Abstract