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Within the soundtrack of his youth, Walter Thompson-Hernández and his buddies favored to plan a recreation of escape. Extending their arms in a v-formation at their facet, they might race down the road on weekend afternoons imagining the liberty of the airplanes hovering throughout the blue infinity of their Huntington Park neighborhood.
Thompson-Hernández by no means misplaced that sense of dreaming. This month, he made his feature-length debut on the 2026 Sundance Movie Pageant with “If I Go Will They Miss Me,” a movie of audacious sight and attentive storytelling that unfolds from the angle of its protagonist Lil Ant, a Watts-raised, 12-year-old obsessive about airplanes and Greek mythology. The place coming-of-age tales typically confront the crush of innocence — the fracture and shock of stolen advantage — Thompson-Hernández as a substitute renders one about preservation. A preservation, partially, held collectively by Lozita (Danielle Brooks), a mother and spouse working to maintain her household complete now that Massive Ant (J. Alphonse Nicholson) is residence from jail.
The movie isn’t attempting to soak up or recklessly mirror the traumas of the Black household a lot as make a case for its nuance. In “If I Go,” Thompson-Hernández scraps the three-act construction for one thing extra novelistic, a danger {that a} lesser director might need fumbled however one he turns right into a profound taxonomy on grace. It’s a story that interrogates — with a looking out and brutal tenderness — the how, why and who of our emotional being. Whilst Lil Ant yearns to be nearer to his father, what the movie doesn’t do is beg you to empathize with the circumstances that its characters battle towards; as a substitute, it calls for that you just acknowledge their presence, their wounds and their dreaming.
Walter Thompson-Hernández, director of “If I Go Will They Miss Me.”
(Michael “Cambio” Fernandez)
Thompson-Hernández’s cinematic canvas recollects a Los Angeles hardly ever afforded witness on display. You gained’t discover any wasted fascinated with the drained pathologies of city decay; the movie takes pleasure in depicting Black Angelenos within the fullness of their complexity, celebrating the toil and surprise of how individuals come collectively and collapse, of how love is damaged and remade. “There’s already a lyricism that exists in every of our lives,” he tells me. “In how we converse, in how our our bodies transfer via the world, and the way we contact one another. I’m delicate to that.”
Although at this time he primarily works within the medium of movie, Thompson-Hernández has a kaleidoscopic method to craft. A former journalist for the New York Instances, he’s as snug writing in regards to the legacy of Black cowboys in Southern California (his 2020 e-book, “The Compton Cowboys: The New Era of Cowboys in America’s City Heartland,” was a New York Instances bestseller) as he’s directing a Beats By Dre industrial for the Tremendous Bowl or capturing a sports activities documentary for Netflix. In 2025, his Portuguese-language movie “Kites” — a narrative about private reclamation in favelas of Rio de Janeiro — gained the Particular Jury Point out for Viewpoints on the Tribeca Movie Pageant. What Thompson-Hernández’s artwork so simply dispels, irrespective of the style it finds a house in, are all of the knotty, misguided and trite representations of otherness in our up to date world. He’s a seer of the unseen.
(Vladimir Santos) (Kemal Cilengir)
Jason Parham: A serious theme within the movie wrestles with what it means to search out your home at residence if you return. Was {that a} private story?
Walter Thompson-Hernández: A lot occurs to the figures in our lives who journey away from us and finally come again residence. Thematically, this film is about flight and transportation — each the bodily flights that one takes, but additionally the emotional and religious flights. Massive Ant, the daddy [character], returns after doing a stint in jail, however what his son sees as a Grecian 10-year battle. That’s been my relationship to so most of the males who I grew up round.
JP: How so?
WTH: They might be gone for some time and we wouldn’t know the place they might be. Then they might simply present up after two or three or 4 years. We’d ask questions. It could be, “So-and-so was locked up” or “So-and-so needed to go away for some time however now he’s again.” Greek mythology grew to become a North Star for understanding very sophisticated characters in my very own life.
JP: Why was that sense of creativeness essential to discover?
WTH: The aperture from which I lived my life was very small. It was a really contained world that solely existed round just a few geographic places and some blocks. Ultimately I used to be capable of depart. However only a few of us get to make it out. Which is a bizarre sentence — get to make it out — as a result of so many individuals wish to be right here and are available right here on a regular basis. However there are these of us that received the prospect to journey and to basically fly. The older I received, the extra I noticed how small my world was as a baby, but additionally how expansive and imaginative it was. In Ta-Nehisi Coates’s e-book “Between the World and Me,” there’s a passage that I all the time take into consideration. I’m paraphrasing, however he tells his son one thing to the extent of — James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, these are yours. After which he says Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky and Simone de Beauvoir — itemizing all these European artists and thinkers — these are additionally yours. I’m extending that care and beauty to the boy on this film. A number of us, we don’t get to dream in that means as Black or brown boys in L.A.
JP: What did younger Walter dream about?
WTH: Our residence was proper in between each LAX flight paths. The sound of those airplanes is one thing that I’ll always remember. My mother and aunts nonetheless dwell in that neighborhood. Once I return, I overlook how robust the sound of the airplanes are, how abrasive and all-encompassing. As a baby, I used to be drawn to the thriller of them — the place they have been coming from and the place they have been going. I’d think about who was in them. My buddies and I, we made up video games the place we might race airplanes on our bikes or we’d dash down the block extending our arms. That they had this energy over us. The film is me making sense of that thriller and wonder whereas additionally understanding that I’ve bronchial asthma due to them.
JP: You’re referring to the well being problems individuals undergo from in areas downwind of the flight paths.
WTH: Most cancers charges and bronchial asthma are so prevalent among the many individuals who I grew up round. There may be an irony in airplanes. On one hand, we are able to dream about them and all of the locations they’ll take us, however the tangible results are that they’re harming us. Jet fuelers, all these issues. As kids, how can we wrestle with these advanced concepts, whereas on the bottom wrestling with advanced concepts about adolescence, about our dad and mom. To say rising up underneath the LAX flight path is an advanced expertise, there’s a lot reality in that. Taking the mythology of those airplanes and making use of that to the mythology that we create about adults in our lives is one thing that I hope individuals actually really feel on this film.
JP: There are a variety of good technical decisions within the movie, from the sound to the set design. Who have been your influences?
WTH: I might reference movies like “Killer of Sheep” or “The Battle of Algiers” or “Gummo” or “He Received Sport”; there’s a listing of no less than 50 motion pictures. However there’s one thing about taking a look at a Jacob Lawrence portray that gives me the largest inspiration by way of the dexterity and freedom and elasticity of Black our bodies in house. There’s one thing about portray as a medium for me that lives exterior of the boundaries of images and movie. There aren’t a variety of boundaries and bounds to how painters expertise the world. Whether or not it’s Jacob Lawrence or Henry Taylor or Winfred Rembert or Kerry James Marshall. I clearly examine literature, images and movie, however portray is the place I’m going for concepts round framing and composition.
(Vladimir Santos)
JP: The movie performs with completely different interpretations of sunshine. How would you describe your relationship to mild?
WTH: I’m so drawn to pure lighting. I’m drawn to affected person frames. Often the body is a center shot or a large shot. And there’s inserts and close-ups typically, however I really feel very assured in the way in which that we stage and we block the scene. I really feel assured that the data is gonna exist on display. Once I was a journalist on the New York Instances, I didn’t simply write the whole lot, I additionally photographed the whole lot I labored on. When it comes to creating a visible language, I really feel very, very snug framing and creating compositions in movie. A number of instances you watch motion pictures that really feel over-lit. There’s an excessive amount of info that we’re capable of collect. Working with our cinematographer, Michael Fernandez, we belief the viewers a lot, virtually an excessive amount of. If one thing feels a bit darker, if one thing isn’t lit in a means that feels slightly too extremely produced, I belief that somebody will nonetheless be capable to acknowledge and discover the reality and honesty in each body.
JP: A lot in order that L.A. begins to really feel like its personal character. Was there a sure story — one which hasn’t been informed in regards to the metropolis — that you simply wished to light up?
WTH: So many people grew up watching ’90s L.A. motion pictures: “South Central,” “Menace II Society,” “Friday.” All of the Chicano gangster motion pictures, “Blood In Blood Out.” There was additionally “Warmth.” There’s so many motion pictures about Los Angeles within the ’90s that basically received L.A. in a means that the majority modern-day motion pictures about Los Angeles don’t. One thing occurred alongside the way in which the place individuals who weren’t from L.A. began to make motion pictures about Los Angeles. It felt a bit tropey typically. It created a guidelines. “Oh, it wants a lowrider. It wants a palm tree. It wants excellent orange, cotton sweet lighting.” It feels kinda corny, if I’m being trustworthy. For lots of us, I don’t must let you know that this film is ready in L.A. You’re feeling it, you hear it.
JP: Sure, you hear it. I appreciated how the sonic texture — whether or not it was a Nate Dogg observe or radio spots from Energy 106 — helped floor the viewer not solely in what they have been witnessing, however why.
WTH: Sonically, I’m having a dialog on this film about how this once-primarily Black group set in Nickerson Gardens in Watts was as soon as over 90% Black, at this time is over 80% Latino. Which is an actual dialog about change, about how Black individuals have been getting pushed out for generations, but additionally a posh story about immigration. It’s not all the time violence, there’s additionally peace and all this different stuff. The best way I discover that’s via sound and music. In the event you discover, this household, the Harris household, they hear a variety of Spanish-language music coming from a neighbor’s residence, coming from the surface. There’s a model of that that feels extra soapboxy, the place I’m telling someone in dialogue or within the scene that this group was as soon as Black and it’s virtually not Black. For me, it simply felt extra fascinating to listen to that. We’re listening to a Mexican ice cream truck and all these different issues. That’s additionally telling us that this household is experiencing demographic change.
JP: If we are able to, I wish to discuss in regards to the state of Hollywood —
WTH: It was so onerous to get this film made, man. It was a problem. If I’m being extremely trustworthy with you, I believe there was a run starting in 2020 or so, the place lots of people felt the urge and possibly stress to assist motion pictures made by girls and folks of colour.
JP: With out query.
WTH: And other people have been supported in ways in which have been unimaginable. However for one motive or one other, a few of these motion pictures didn’t do too effectively. They didn’t make the cash again, which we are able to sit right here and debate about why that occurred. I attempted to make this film on the tail finish of that run of assist. Everybody in Hollywood liked the script. Everybody in Hollywood liked me. Everybody stated, “Hey man, we love this. And we love you a lot. However we supported one thing related a 12 months or two in the past and we’re not doing that anymore.” I heard that a lot, and from individuals that will shock you. Then, in 2023, I received concerned within the Sundance Catalyst program. This system invitations financiers to finance eight impartial motion pictures. [“If I Go”] actually took a variety of assist and a variety of effort from individuals who believed in me and believed within the script. It was an fascinating time to make an impartial film a couple of Black household from Los Angeles.
JP: Does the fact of business have any bearing on the artwork you wish to create versus the artwork it’s prepared for?
WTH: The artwork that I wish to make seems to be at people making sense of their lives and the world in a means that possibly we haven’t seen earlier than. There’s a variety of lyricism. There’s all kinds of issues. I don’t know if I’m essentially fascinated with the film business after I make the artwork that I make. Individuals don’t know what they need till they see it, till they really feel it. I all the time say this: Typically you make one thing that exists in time and typically you make issues which are of time. When persons are making issues which are of time, it’s responding to the zeitgeist or bizarre concepts round advertising and what’s standard.
JP: What’s trending on TikTok.
WTH: Precisely. It feels so reactionary. That’s of time. I like to consider making issues which are in time. In time, for me, is making artwork that’s in dialog with this stunning legacy of artistry and of filmmaking. It’s making issues with out fascinated with the second. It’s fascinated with reality in character, reality in dialogue, reality in scene, reality in composition, reality in sound. That’s what I’m fascinated with. I’m fascinated with honesty. With regards to my artwork, I all the time wish to be in time.
(Michael “Cambio” Fernandez)
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