A New York artist’s desperate life is shattered and rebuilt in a raw, cinematic odyssey, fusing avant-garde dance, verité documentary, and magical realism into a pulsing testament to the city’s creative soul.
SYNOPSIS
At dawn, Rose runs across the Brooklyn Bridge, her footsteps dissolving into dance that continues inside an abandoned warehouse studio. Motion is her refuge and first language.
4AM is a dance film where story emerges through the body rather than dialogue. Movement carries memory; breath carries emotion. The camera stays close, capturing sweat, strain, and hesitation, and small physical truths that reveal a life from the inside.
Rose survives on the margins of New York’s underground arts scene, managing dancers and drag performers at chaotic after-hours parties while barely getting by. Her card declines, her shoes are taped together, and she sustains herself with humor and scraps. Alone, she imagines an expressive dance she is building in secret, something larger than her life.
Her body begins to betray her. Mid-movement, she freezes as fragments of memory surface: a hallway, a closed door, the feeling of being trapped. When she learns she won’t be paid for months, she commits to creating an original performance anyway, believing that an angel investor will somehow save the day.
She meets Jordan, a quiet dancer whose grounded presence steadies her. Their connection is largely wordless. When she freezes, he waits. He reframes dance as purpose, a force moving through her, and she begins to let the work deepen.
As they rehearse, the piece takes shape through repetition, collapse, and recovery. When the promise of investment falls through, Rose performs alone. The freezes return, longer now, until she transforms the trembling into choreography.
Director Statement
I am drawn to stories where the body speaks before language does.
As a documentary filmmaker, I see myself as holding the microphone for my subjects, allowing them to tell their own stories. In this film, Rose’s language is dance, so the story unfolds through movement, in her voice rather than mine.
We live in a culture that rewards articulation and explanation, but trauma does not begin in language. It begins in breath, muscle, and the sudden inability to move. Rose’s freezes are not metaphors but physiological events, the body remembering something the mind cannot safely hold. I am interested in what happens when we stop forcing the body to override itself and instead allow it to move as it needs to.
This film does not treat trauma as spectacle or explanation. The past surfaces in fragments, shifts of light, distortions of sound, a hand hovering before touching a door. Memory intrudes the way it does in life: abruptly and without permission.
The camera stays close to the body. Breath often precedes dialogue. Sweat, trembling hands, and uneven weight shifts become narrative rather than background. Long takes allow the audience to remain inside discomfort without the relief of cutting away.
I want viewers to feel their own breathing change as Rose’s does.
Supporter Statement
Rose Alice's statement:
What happens at 4AM when the world is quiet, but your mind isn’t?
When doubt is loud. When purpose won’t let you sleep. When the truth you’ve been avoiding finally demands to be faced.
4AM is where we meet them. The ones still awake. The ones chasing something bigger than themselves. Artists, dreamers, outsiders pushed to the edge of who they are, and pulled toward who they’re meant to become.
This is not the polished version. This is the in-between. The raw, unfiltered hours where obsession meets exhaustion… where passion turns restless… where something begins to break and something stronger takes its place.
What if the real story isn’t the success we see, but the unseen hours that shape it? The failures no one applauds. The questions no one answers. The moments that demand everything and give nothing back but the chance to keep going.
At 4AM, there’s no audience. No validation. Just you and the truth.
From the first spark of an idea to the cost of bringing it to life, this is a journey through vulnerability, grit, and transformation. Brokenness becomes fuel. Silence becomes clarity. And creation becomes survival.
Step behind closed doors and witness the becoming. The doubt. The resilience. The quiet decisions that change everything.
Because at 4AM, you either give up…
or you begin.
ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)
Director Trish Dalton
Trish Dalton is a DGA director and producer known for creating powerful, socially driven documentaries that spark conversation and inspire change. Drawn to stories that live in moral gray areas, her work is defined by quiet tension, emotional nuance, and deeply authentic moments.
Her films have earned widespread critical acclaim, including an Emmy nomination, multiple film festival awards, and recognition from People magazine as one of the “Ten Women Changing the World” in 2020.
Most recently, Dalton co-directed Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge with Academy Award winner Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. The film opened the Tribeca Film Festival, received an Emmy nomination, won the Cinema for Peace Women’s Empowerment Award, and is a Hulu Original currently streaming on Disney+.
Dalton’s feature documentary One Night Stand, a lively behind-the-scenes look at New York City’s leading actors, writers, and composers, won the Audience Award at the NewFest Film Festival and was later acquired by Ovation TV after a theatrical run in more than 450 theaters across North America.
Her work spans the arts and urgent social issues, including human rights, gender equity, and systemic inequality. Films such as Bordering on Treason, Southmost USA, Student Athlete (HBO Sports), and Reggae Girlz amplify underrepresented voices and contribute to meaningful cultural and legislative impact.
Over more than two decades, Dalton has filmed across 40+ U.S. states and internationally, directing voices including Lupita Nyong’o, Oprah Winfrey, Hillary Clinton, Cedella Marley, Chris Evert, and Martina Navratilova.
Producer Rose Alice
Rose is an award-winning contemporary ballet dancer and choreographer based between New York and London, she is a Prix de Lausanne finalist who has built an international career across stage, screen, and the commercial sector.
Her performance credits include serving as Principal Dancer in Apologue 2047, directed by Zhang Yimou in Beijing, appearing in a production by Franco Dragone at the Palais Garnier, and performing in Onegin at the Royal Opera House. She has represented the UK at the World Expo in Astana and served as Resident Principal Dancer and Choreographer for Huawei at Mobile World Congress.
Her commercial work includes collaborations with global brands such as BMW, Jaguar, Rolex, Patek Philippe, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Tiffany & Co., Net-A-Porter, and Audi, and touring Asia for Johnnie Walker press launches alongside David Beckham and Lewis Hamilton. In music, she is Resident Choreographer for Arlo Parks, contributing to tours supporting Billie Eilish and Harry Styles, with performances at Coachella and Glastonbury Festival. Her choreography spans artists including Biig Piig, Lana Lubany, and Divock Origi, as well as music videos for Rag’n’Bone Man, Mika, and Bloc Party.
On screen, she has earned Best Female Performance awards at multiple international festivals for a dance-fashion film collaboration with designer Aneka Manners. She was also a finalist at the Stuttgart International Choreography Competition and shortlisted for the U.K. National Dance Awards.
Recently, she performed as Principal Dancer in Ship of Fools with Tabula Rasa Dance Theater and Prisma at the Baryshnikov Center.
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