Award-Winning ‘Kokomo City’ Hits Theaters: Film About Black Trans Women Documents “Human Beings In Their Rawest Form”
deadline.comBam! Kokomo City grabs viewers from the first frame as Liyah, a Black trans woman, recounts meeting with a man at her home who was going to pay her for sex.
Things were proceeding as expected until Liyah discovered a gun on the man’s person and concluded she faced an imminent threat.
A fracas erupted as the pair fought for the gun, tumbling down a flight of stairs. Filmmaker D. Smith, in her directorial debut, recreates that moment in a rock ‘em sock ‘em scene as wild and visceral as anything you’ll see in a Hollywood film. “There were no rules,” Smith tells Deadline about her approach to that sequence and the entire documentary. “That was just for me to really do everything that I always wanted to do [as a filmmaker].” Smith’s fresh and dynamic direction has wowed critics and audiences since Kokomo City debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January, where it won two awards.
Magnolia Pictures released the film in Los Angeles this weekend after opening it in New York last weekend. For Smith, the documentary was a DIY project; she shot it herself and edited it — on iMovie, an app people typically use for slide shows, home videos and such. “We had to transfer the final files [from iMovie], and it was a nightmare for my producer Harris [Doran], but he got it done, and I would never do that again.
