In Watts, California, a 12-year-old boy attempts to connect with his distant father following his incarceration while sensing mysterious visions, from airplanes and Greek gods, that seem to follow him through his everyday world.

Set in the Watts neighbourhood of Los Angeles, the film follows twelve-year-old Lil Ant (Bodhi Dell), a sensitive young artist whose fascination with airplanes and Greek mythology shapes his understanding of the world around him. With his father, Big Ant (J. Alphonse Nicholson), newly home from prison, Lil Ant longs for a closeness that neither quite knows how to build. His father’s return brings the promise of reconnection, but also exposes the distance between a child’s unwavering belief in his parent and the difficulties of rebuilding a life together.

Expanding his short of the same name, Thompson-Hernández brings everyday life in Watts into conversation with a child’s expansive inner world. Moving between social realism and reverie, the film explores imagination as a way of making sense of absence, finding connection, and envisioning possibilities beyond the limits of the familiar. Filmed largely at Nickerson Gardens, with a cast that brings together professional performers and members of the surrounding community, IF I GO WILL THEY MISS ME locates its mythology within the places, relationships, and rituals of Black neighbourhood life.

Featuring Danielle Brooks as Lil Ant’s mother, Lozita, the film attends to the labour of sustaining relationships through separation and return—and to the wider circle of neighbours and friends who help care for a child. Through its intimate portrait of a family negotiating absence and attachment, Thompson-Hernández considers what children inherit from their caregivers and chosen family, what remains unspoken between them, and the possibilities for tenderness across those distances. Attentive to the pressures that shape its characters’ lives without allowing those pressures to define them, IF I GO WILL THEY MISS ME makes room for Black boyhood as a space of invention, vulnerability, and possibility. -SARAH-TAI BLACK

ACCESSIBILITY: 

• The film will be presented with closed captioning.

• Paradise has a wheelchair accessible washroom on site and wheelchair accessible spaces within the cinema. Please reach out to Paradise if you would like to reserve a space for your mobility device ahead of time.

• Patrons are kindly asked to wear a mask while attending this screening. Black communities continue to be disproportionately affected by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the structural inequities it further entrenches. KN95 and/or N95 masks will be available onsite for guests, generously provided by @maskbloctoronto.

• Please don’t hesitate to reach out to either Black Gold or Paradise if you have additional access needs, concerns, or questions!

Doors Open 30 Minutes Before Showtime.