“It was sort of like that scene in Coming to America, where Eddie Murphy and Semmi are in the bar interviewing all the different women”: D. Smith on her Sundance-winning Kokomo City

At its heart, D. Smith’s 2023 Sundance-winning (NEXT Innovator Award and NEXT Audience Award) Kokomo City is a music-laden, kaleidoscopically-edited series of raw monologues from four defiantly survivalist women whose voices are too often eclipsed by what the debut feature director terms the “red carpet narrative”: “When a fierce PR team puts a trans woman in a fabulous gown and has her speak like a pageant finalist.” (Aka the RuPaul’s Drag Race effect.) Indeed, while Daniella Carter, Koko Da Doll (who, tragically and outrageously, was fatally shot by a teenager last spring), Liyah Mitchell and Dominique Silver are all Black, beautiful and trans, they are certainly not interested in making straight cis white Americans feel all kumbaya comfortable – nor straight cis African Americans for that matter. All are urban (NYC and Atlanta) sex workers with strong and deep opinions on a wide variety of topics – from the vulnerability of macho Black men to the fear of Black mothers for their sons (especially when those sons become daughters. Which according to Carter adds a whole other level of psychological complication for single moms, often forced to grapple with male abandonment for a second time). Not to mention the day-to-day reality of working in the oldest profession in the world, from facing life-threatening dangers to encountering unexpected hilarities (sometimes simultaneously). Just after the film was awarded Outstanding Debut at the Cinema Eye Honors (where the aforementioned four characters likewise received The Unforgettables non-competitive honor), and prior to its nomination for Best Documentary at the Film Independent Spirit Awards, I caught up with Smith, who’s also a twice Grammy-nominated producer-singer-songwriter, to learn all about this unusual passion project; one forged during three years of couch surfing after being shown the door by the music industry for walking “in her truth,” as the red carpet was rolled up back in 2014.

To read my interview visit Hammer to Nail.