Filmmaker Osato Dixon isn’t new to storytelling. His work behind the scenes at HBO, NBCUniversal, and McKinsey & Firm already proved his eye for narrative, however Wait Till Tomorrow, premiering on the 2025 American Black Movie Pageant, is totally different. It’s private. It’s layered. And it’s unapologetically for us.
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Shot over three years, the documentary follows greater than a dozen Black People throughout cities like Atlanta, Detroit, Houston, and D.C., all navigating totally different realities of financial mobility. From a younger lady rising up beneath the load of monetary pressure to a mortician persevering with his household’s enterprise legacy, Dixon captures how survival and stability present up in on a regular basis.
BOSSIP’s very personal, Lauryn Bass, received a director’s lower dialog concerning the movie with Dixon.
“These aren’t reenactments,” Dixon instructed Bass. “These are actual folks, and being of their area modified how I needed to indicate them.”
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That is true storytelling of Black Tales–no narration, no gimmicks.
The place Knowledge Meets Dignity
Whereas Wait Till Tomorrow was formed partly by “The Financial State of Black America,” a report from the McKinsey Institute for Financial Mobility, Dixon made it clear: the documentary didn’t begin with numbers.
“It actually was… households and tales first, after which I used to be ready to decide on which statistics might assist actually thread that needle,” he stated.
He didn’t drive details onto folks’s lives. He let the tales communicate first and introduced within the numbers to help what was already unfolding.
Like Pauline, whose phrases about survival lower by way of louder than any coverage memo.
“One in every of our characters, Pauline, mentions she will be able to both pay her scholar loans or feed her household,” Dixon stated. “Simply in that one sentence, she speaks to the complexity of that knowledge.”
Dixon additionally labored with Black financial consultants to border the problems from inside the group, not from the surface wanting in.
“The attractive half additionally was the financial mobility consultants are… additionally Black consultants,” he stated. “They’re in a position to 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. Lots of the placing black-and-white stills in Wait Till Tomorrow have been shot by Dixon himself, with an intentional mix of studio portraits and road images.
“The black-and-white images that you simply see—I’m the photographer behind it as nicely,” he stated. “There was studio images that we did, and there was additionally road images.”
The movie’s visible type 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 considered 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 stated, “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 Workforce Behind the Reality
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:
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Kelley Robins Hicks, producer (Random Acts of Flyness, Area Jam: A New Legacy)
Jamund Washington, producer (Gimme the Loot, Ziwe, Tramps)
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Kara Murphy, co-writer and Atlanta-based author/editor, who helped form the undertaking’s narrative arc
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Collectively, they created a documentary that respects the emotional complexity of its topics with out decreasing them to points.
A Movie That Feels Like Now
Wait Till Tomorrow doesn’t draw back from how advanced the dialog round Black wealth actually is. It attracts connections between historical past, coverage, and generational impression—however all the time by way of the folks dwelling it.
“We contact on historical past—like white flight in Detroit—however we additionally discover the now,” Dixon stated.
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 considered one of them brings the difficulty dwelling.
Past the Theater: Constructing Entry and Engagement
Dixon understands that not each viewers member experiences movie the identical method—and never all engagement occurs inside a theater.
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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 attracts from the movie’s most private arcs. Tales like Crystal and her daughter Asia—a mom navigating financial stress whereas elevating a daughter by way of highschool—will likely be reimagined for broader platforms, permitting the movie’s message to maneuver by way of totally different areas.
“We need to share this content material in a social trend… that invitations engagement,” Dixon stated. “These characters invite us into their lives in ways in which I feel will likely be difficult in a great way for audiences.”
The undertaking can also be hitting the street. 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 sturdy curiosity in bringing the movie into instructional establishments as nicely.
“We’re on our competition tour proper now,” he instructed Bass. “This kind of interplay—with retailers 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 study extra, go to waituntiltomorrowfilm.com.
