Winner of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival NEXT Innovator Award and the NEXT Audience Award, Kokomo City is a fireball of energy and truth that is ready to burst into theaters. Directed, produced, edited, and shot by filmmaker D. Smith, Kokomo City proves that a documentary is only as good as its subjects, and what we have here are excellent subjects telling unapologetically raw and unforgettable stories.
Seen through a bold black-and-white filter, this tell-all highlights four Black transgender sex workers in Atlanta and New York City. Daniella Carter, Koko Da Doll, Liyah Mitchell, and Dominique Silver share their private experiences – past and present – as “entrepreneurs” who have taken an unconventional route toward self-sufficiency and independence. Unfiltered and definitely NSFW, the women get candid as they bare all to D. Smith whose understanding and empathy permeates from behind the camera.
Kokomo City humanizes the people who are often referred to as a statistic, or an “other”. We see their faces, learn their names, and are given access to their complicated world for 73 minutes. Comprised entirely of interviews which range from the logistics of “topping” and “bottoming” with clients, to familial disappointment and disownment, the film doesn’t glamorize the sex industry in the slightest but shows how the promise of fast money is enticing enough to those in desperate financial situations. It’s a sad reality that D. Smith captures with such elegance and grace through engaging and rhetorical questions.
The subject matter is dark, but there is lighthearted humor throughout the film that keeps audiences from pitying the women onscreen. Rather, we admire their bravery in the face of violence or bigotry. Despite coming from different backgrounds, the women all agree on one fact: this is survival work and it’s risky. For too long, women and those who are woman-identifying have put their lives in the hands of men, trusting them to keep us safe. For Black trans sex workers, every client is a potential threat, which highlights the horrible conditions they must continue to accept.
Aside from spotlighting a tragic existence, if Kokomo City does nothing else, hopefully, it will aid in the visibility of transgender women on screen. D. Smith has taken a conversation that has been purposefully avoided for years and made a feature film that shines a bright spotlight on these vulnerable, human experiences.
Distributed by Magnolia Pictures. Opening this Friday at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Downtown Los Angeles.
