Like Pauline, whose phrases about survival reduce by louder than any coverage memo.

“Certainly one of our characters, Pauline, mentions she will both pay her scholar loans or feed her household,” Dixon mentioned. “Simply in that one sentence, she speaks to the complexity of that knowledge.”

Dixon additionally labored with Black financial specialists to border the problems from inside the neighborhood, not from the surface wanting in.

“The attractive half additionally was the financial mobility specialists are… additionally Black specialists,” he mentioned. “They’re capable of additionally typically share a few of their very own private reflections… by way of why this issues now.”

A Visible Love Letter to Black Life

Dixon didn’t simply direct the movie—he additionally picked up the digicam. Actually. Most of the putting black-and-white stills in Wait Till Tomorrow have been shot by Dixon himself, with an intentional mix of studio portraits and avenue pictures.

“The black-and-white pictures that you just see—I’m the photographer behind it as nicely,” he mentioned. “There was studio pictures that we did, and there was additionally avenue pictures.”

The movie’s visible fashion attracts from a deep legacy of Black photographers, together with Eli Reed’s Black in America and the enduring lens of Gordon Parks.

“Clearly Gordon Parks, but additionally Eli Reed… it’s certainly one of my favourite photograph research,” Dixon shared. “He checked out what actually occurred within the ’80s and ’90s in Black America.”

That intentionality—visually and narratively—was by no means rushed.

“You’ll be able to inform a narrative over the course of a 12 months,” he mentioned, “however actually seeing how change can happen takes time. The endurance within the course of is one thing that I discovered myself actually being okay with.”

The Staff Behind the Fact

Whereas Dixon helms the movie with a transparent sense of imaginative and prescient, he’s joined by a robust workforce of creatives who deliver their very own storytelling energy:

• Kelley Robins Hicks, producer (Random Acts of Flyness, House Jam: A New Legacy)
• Jamund Washington, producer (Gimme the Loot, Ziwe, Tramps)

• Kara Murphy, co-writer and Atlanta-based author/editor, who helped form the undertaking’s narrative arc

Collectively, they created a documentary that respects the emotional complexity of its topics with out lowering them to points.

A Movie That Feels Like Now

Wait Till Tomorrow doesn’t shrink back from how complicated the dialog round Black wealth actually is. It attracts connections between historical past, coverage, and generational influence—however at all times by the folks dwelling it.

“We contact on historical past—like white flight in Detroit—however we additionally discover the now,” Dixon mentioned.

That features tales like Armand, a lawyer who was the primary in his household to attend school and is now constructing wealth and advocacy from the bottom up. Or Antonio, a funeral director whose legacy traces again to an ancestor who escaped enslavement and constructed a life in Detroit.

Every character offers a special lens—however each certainly one of them brings the problem house.

Past the Theater: Constructing Entry and Engagement

Dixon understands that not each viewers member experiences movie the identical means—and never all engagement occurs inside a theater.

That’s why Wait Till Tomorrow is being tailored past the long-form. Dixon and his workforce plan to create shorter, social-first content material that pulls from the movie’s most private arcs. Tales like Crystal and her daughter Asia—a mom navigating financial stress whereas elevating a daughter by highschool—might be reimagined for broader platforms, permitting the movie’s message to maneuver by completely different areas.

“We wish to share this content material in a social style… that invitations engagement,” Dixon mentioned. “These characters invite us into their lives in ways in which I believe might be difficult in a great way for audiences.”

The undertaking can also be hitting the highway. After its world premiere at ABFF, Wait Till Tomorrow will proceed its competition run, with confirmed screenings in New York, Texas, and Massachusetts. Distribution conversations are underway, and Dixon says there’s robust curiosity in bringing the movie into instructional establishments as nicely.

“We’re on our competition tour proper now,” he informed Bass. “Any such interplay—with shops like this, with audiences that care—helps the movie attain who it was made for.”

As a result of at its core, Wait Till Tomorrow isn’t asking for consideration—it’s demanding reflection. And that’s the true task.

To comply with the movie’s journey or be taught extra, go to waituntiltomorrowfilm.com.