And It Was Only a Dream is a feature documentary about life in 2020, told through four very different—but deeply interconnected—individuals. It’s a story about trauma, isolation, and the importance of community in the American experience.

This is my first feature film as a director, a project that took nearly five years to complete. It began when I was connected with filmmaker Ian Derry, who wanted to make a film about award-winning photojournalist Adam Gray as he documented the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. (You can watch that film, Eyewitness, here.)

But then I just kept filming. I followed Adam to other assignments, and during a BLM protest in NYC, my camera shifted to the protest’s organizer, leading me to follow her story as well.

While the film captures many of the struggles Americans faced in 2020, its heart lies in West Virginia, where we follow a woman training as a beekeeper, working through a year with her community to produce enough honey to sell at the season’s end.

I approached this film as a document of our time— Just how divided we were. But I also wanted to offer a hopeful solution: community. In this case, it’s a community coming together through something as simple as beekeeping.

Not that this is A Man with a Movie Camera, but that film was very much on my mind while making this.

When I first showed early cuts to people, a common reaction was: “I’m not ready to see this again.”

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Here is a link to the film’s website.

Looking ahead, I plan to use the film as a fundraising tool for non-profits, donating a percentage of streaming revenue to organizations that support community-focused initiatives. //

I fully funded this film myself, but see the money being spent as a class in how to manage a feature-length doc.