A practice known the world over, the origins of "jazz funerals" are as complex as they are varied. Filmed over twenty-two years, City of a Million Dreams explores race relations in American society by training a lens on the unique and resilient culture of New Orleans, as represented in their long-standing burial traditions.

In 2005, writer and videographer Deb Cotton leaves “hard-hearted Hollywood” for New Orleans and becomes a chronicler of the parading club culture spawned by the legacy of funerals with music. This tradition is carried by the prolific clarinetist Michael White, renowned for playing “the widow’s wail” in sorrowful dirges. When Hurricane Katrina hits, White loses everything in the catastrophic flooding. In his struggle to rebuild, White becomes an everyman, embodying the resurrection spirit of jazz funerals.

Deb and Michael take us on a journey into the city’s past, searching for answers in the face of tragedies both present and past.

As Deb follows the parading culture through the aching recovery, Michael explores his ancestral roots in the dawn of jazz. The danced-memory of enslaved Africans charges a reimagining of antebellum Congo Square, juxtaposed with the grandeur of European marching bands. With burial pageants as a mirror on the city’s history, the film hits a violent turning point at a parade shooting, plunging Deb and Michael into a search for the city’s soul.

Based on Jason Berry's celebrated book of the same name, City of a Million Dreams offers a thoughtful and comprehensive examination on this enduring local tradition that refuses to yield or conform.