dream hampton is an award-winning filmmaker and writer from Detroit. For two decades her essays and cultural criticism helped shape a generation and appeared in the New York Times, The Village Voice, Vibe and The Source. She collaborated with Shawn Jay-Z Carter to author the bestselling “Decoded” (2010). Her most recent works include the award winning short film “Freshwater” (NYT OpDocs/PBS, 2023). Selected works include “Treasure“ (Frameline, 2015), “Finding Justice” (BET, 2019), “It’s A Hard Truth Ain’t It” (HBO, 2019) and the Emmy nominated "Surviving R. Kelly" (Netflix, 2019), which broke ratings records and earned her a Peabody Award. In 2019, hampton was named one of TIME 100's most influential people in the world.