Tina Kakadelis
Kokomo City begins with Liyah lounging on her bed, playing with her hair, telling a story. Her casual nature is somewhat at odds with the story she’s telling. It’s about a time she thought she was going to die at the hands of a guy who hired her for sex, but it’s not the story that immediately catches the audience’s attention. It’s the self-assuredness from behind the camera. There’s style, panache, and the sense that this isn’t director D. Smith’s first rodeo… but it is. The documentary follows four transgender sex workers, Koko Da Doll and Liyah Mitchell in Georgia, Daniella Carter and Dominique Silver in New York.
The look of Kokomo City is striking. The movie is in high-contrast black and white and sometimes has the graininess of film, making the entire documentary feel like a memory. Instantly, there’s a fondness between the audience and the stars. It would be wrong to call these women subjects because that word doesn’t capture their oozing charm and magnetism. They seem to be out-of-your-league-cool, but they talk to the camera like they’re old friends catching up at a sleepover. Kokomo City has the essence of verité while relishing in the freedom that the medium of film offers. There are artsy montages, reenactments, and experimental visuals to accompany the stories of these women, but nothing ever outshines them. They are the heart and soul of the movie.
Smith’s Kokomo City premiered to widespread acclaim at 2023’s Sundance. The documentary won the NEXT Audience & Innovator awards and then picked up the Panorama Audience Award at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival. Kokomo City also played at this year’s SXSW festival. It’s now August, a mere seven months since the film debuted. In that time, the Human Rights Campaign has been made aware of the deaths of fifteen transgender people in the United States. Koko Da Doll, one of the stars of Kokomo City, was shot and killed in Atlanta in April. At the time of Koko’s death, the Atlanta Police Department had three open investigations into violent crimes against transgender women in 2023.
Transgender rights and the individuals themselves are under attack in the United States. It seems like new bills are being introduced every day to further infringe on the rights of trans people. In Oklahoma, a bill was introduced that would allow for a doctor who recommended gender-affirming care to be jailed for up to 26 years. Arizona wants to make it legal for parents and guardians to control the pronouns their children use. Wyoming could make it so that a person who helped a child under the age of eighteen administer a procedure or drug related to a sex change be charged with child abuse and up to ten years of jail time. The list goes on and on and on.
There are other documentaries that focus on the proposed legislation aimed at taking away the basic rights of people who simply want to live their truth. Those documentaries are much more surgical in their approach in an effort to avoid injecting pathos into the argument. Kokomo City doesn’t mention any bills or laws. The women talk about the ways they’ve been treated, their feelings about Blackness, their experience as sex workers, their thoughts on gender, and where they find joy. These conversations are frank and honest but accessible even if Kokomo City is the audience’s first time seeing a piece of media about trans sex workers. The way these women speak feels mundane and run-of-the-mill, despite the fact that they’re talking about trauma, societal norms, and truths that are rarely openly discussed. That speaks to these women, the lives they have led, and how they’ve had to process their lived experiences.
In a way, Kokomo City is simple. It’s just these women talking to the camera in an intimate, honest manner with some stylish filmmaking flourishes, but Kokomo City is revolutionary. It’s a snapshot of a time when the United States is again at a cultural crossroads. When transphobia, racism, and an alarming lack of empathy are rising. Kokomo City is an angry, passionate, proud declaration of taking up space in a world that has taken away the agency of these women.
