Fugitive Dreams Rides the Rails to Your Screen

April Matthis and Robbie Tann as Mary and John, two lost souls in a mythical America in Jason Neulander's Fugitive Dreams. The Austin-made film arrives on VOD this week. (Courtesy of Chemistry Labs)

The best trips can take the longest time to make it to their destination. Finally, the two-decade-plus journey of Jason Neulander's debut feature Fugitive Dreams is complete as the modern American fable has now arrived on VOD.

The Austin-made film follows two drifters, Mary (April Matthis) and John (Robbie Tann), as they ride the rails across a mythical heartland, contending with death, violence, and the overwhelming weight of hope.

Neulander first worked with the story in its original form, Fugitive Pieces, a play by Caridad Svich, as a production by Salvage Vanguard at Hyde Park Theatre back in 2002. As he later told the Chronicle, he came back to the project in 2016 as he was looking for a script for his first feature as a director. Rereading Svich's words, he said, "I found myself in tears and was taken aback by how moved I was by it."

The pair then rewrote the script from a theatrical two-hander to something more cinematic, and in early 2019, Neulander was able to start filming (read our set visit story here). The completed movie screened at the prestigious Fantasia International Film Festival in 2020 before making its home town debut that year at Austin Film Festival. At the time, Chronicle critic Steve Davis called it "a pilgrimage through a vaguely familiar American landscape, haunted by memories bursting with the promise of terrible violence.."

Now the film has finally pulled into the station with a VOD release via Freestyle Digital Media, completing what Neulander called "one of the most challenging and satisfying creative endeavors I’ve ever done."

Fugitive Dreams is available now on AT&T U-Verse, DirecTV, Dish Network Sling TV, in demand on Spectrum and Comcast, Vubiquity, Hoopla in libraries, Swank in colleges and hospitals, Amazon, Apple TV, Vudu , Xbox, Google Play, and YouTube Movies.