KOKOMO CITY

USA | 2023 | 73 min

A unique, rare and enlightening work that manages to give a face and a voice to an often-marginalised community, Kokomo City explores the intimate stories of four black transsexuals with a raw gaze, but not without vivacity and irony. Daniella Carter, Koko Da Doll, Liyah Mitchell, and Dominique Silver, sex workers who live between New York and Atlanta, describe their professions and identities without taboos, opening up without prejudice on issues such as sex, racism, trans identity, and black community. Filmed in a high-contrast, warm black and white that highlights the characters’ handsomeness, the debut feature-length documentary of transgender singer-songwriter and music producer D. Smith is incisive and surprising. We are let in a world of stories on the many customers who cannot be honest with themselves, unravelling deep truths on the complicated relationships that the four transsexuals entertain with friends, family, and cisgender women, on the legacy of slavery, and the many wounds still open. (l.f.)