Why do we dance for the dead? Jazz funerals, famous the world over, have origins shrouded in mystery. This film explores race relations at a tearing time in American life by following burial traditions as a lens on the evolution of New Orleans and its resilient culture.

With filming of jazz funerals spanning twenty-five years, and riveting sequences on the burial dances of enslaved Africans, “City of a Million Dreams” shows the cultural memory of Black New Orleans and rituals of resilience as never before.

New Orleans jazz funerals and Sunday second line parades absorb the pain of death and the legacy of racism, soaring to joyful, transcendent rebirth. But a violent storm and a parade shooting plunge musician Michael White and culture carrier Deb "Big Red" Cotton into a search for the city’s soul.