United in Grief is a hybrid docu-drama that follows competitive hip hop dancer Derrick “Kid Nimbus” Judkins as he grapples with the death of his best friend who introduced him to the world of dance. In the wake of this loss, Derrick struggles not only with sorrow but with the guilt of surviving, the pressure to live up to his friend’s legacy, and the belief that his own talent is undeserving of recognition. With a mix of candid documentary interviews, interwoven with surrealist narrative vignettes we see Derrick wrestling with emotions as a supernatural entity threatens to sever him from the joy and community dance once gave him. By blending grounded realism with poetic allegory, United in Grief is a portrait of loss, resilience, and the way art both haunts and heals.

In this psychological thriller, Dale (Ellyn Jameson) is a detached woman who earns a living by waking strangers up in the morning. She spends her day making house calls, after agreeing to stand-in for a colleague. Dale enters a patient’s house, and is unsettled by the mess she finds. Bradley (Paul Archer) explains he’s been plagued by nightmares, and refuses to get out of bed. Though Dale feels obligated to convince him otherwise, she can’t help but form a pitiful kinship with the man paralyzed by his own dreams.

Director’s Vision for ‘Are You Awake?’

Grief is not merely an individual emotional process, but a shared social condition. How we channel that condition into a life sustaining practice is what United in Grief aims to depict. Inspired by the hip hop dancer Kid Nimbus and his 2022 performance of the same name, this film reflects his journey of navigating the loss of a close friend that introduced
him into the world of competitive dance.

This film honors the mourning
Embraces remembrance
Encourages reflection
And is a portrait that reminds all of us brave enough to venerate those departed from our
earthly proximity that no one is ever gone if they are never forgotten.