KOKOMO CITY

One of the best films to emerge from this year’s Sundance Film Festival—where it took home the NEXT section’s Audience and Innovator Awards—D. Smith’s feature debut is a vibrant look at the lives of four Black transgender sex workers, told by the subjects themselves in all their boisterous, unapologetic glory. New York’s Daniella Carter and Dominique Silver, along with Atlanta’s Koko Da Doll and Liyah Mitchell speak candidly about their experiences, perfectly matched in spirit by Smith’s kinetic filmmaking style marked by expressive black-and-white photography and edited with an expert musicality that speaks to the director’s previous career as a Grammy-nominated producer. The film is alive, celebratory, and a direct rebuke to the notion that trans stories must focus on tragedy to be successful.

And yet, following the film’s premiere and its multi-award-winning festival run, tragedy struck as Koko Da Doll was found murdered in Atlanta this past April. Smith said it best following the news: “I created Kokomo City because I wanted to show the fun, humanized, natural side of Black trans women. I wanted to create images that didn’t show the trauma or the statistics...I wanted to create something fresh and inspiring...We did that! As a team we are more encouraged now than ever to inspire the world with [Koko’s] story. To show how beautiful and full of life she was. She will inspire generations to come and will never be forgotten.” Nor will the film that contains her story, an immediate addition to the canon of LGBTQIA+ cinema.