Kokomo City is a picturesque, raw, straightforward, and culturally intuned documentary about the lives of four Black trans-women sex workers across different U.S. cities. Through interviews with Daniella Carter, Liyah Mitchell, Dominique Silver, the late Koko Da Doll, and a few Black men, Smith illustrates the multitude of consequences that befall those at the bottom of the U.S.’s racially and sexually charged socioeconomic system. The intersections of these most oppressed identities shed new light on how dangerous living in the U.S. can be—being Black, transgender, gay, poor, or a woman individually in white, straight, rich, male America is bad enough, but being a combination of any or all of the above makes it near-impossible to survive, let alone thrive. Kokomo’s four main subjects illustrate that danger, forcing even the most ignorant viewers to understand how different living in the U.S. is based on your appearance. In a land promising equal opportunity—which looks increasingly more daunting under the next President’s official plans—there have always been silenced victims struggling to survive, whether by choice or necessity.

Kokomo City opens with Atlanta, Georgia, resident Liyah Mitchell, detailing a violent encounter with a client. Upon reaching a hotel room with said client and cleaning up to sexually pleasure him, she begins before seeing he has a Glock. Out of (understandable, it’s a fucking gun) instinct, she grabs the guy’s gun and tries shooting him, only for it to click. The two fight and the guy gets his car and speeds off, only for the two to text, reintroduce themselves, and have sex later on the same night. This is how Mitchell and her co-stars live––from client to client, risk to risk. D. Smith gets these hard truths from all of them, revealing their struggles and the larger truths they connect to about American discrimination’s results. Some confront their lives’ complexities, like Koko Da Doll. Throughout Kokomo, she’s either talking to her white compatriot about the permanent separations between them and explaining the anger that comes with it or in her bathtub discussing how “Nah…, don’t let no motherfucking fancy thing that gets in front of you confuse you as to what the fuck this is. This is survival work, this is risky shit.” The group discusses the kinds of men they hook up with: “Like no, we’re meeting guy after guy, who’s this is guy after guy who’s in denial after denial. And so in no way are they there to protect us. They’re there to exploit us, to fetishize us.” They describe the sexually and gender-ly constrictive Black culture created by whiteness, showing how even the oppressed can turn around and oppress others. Combined with various sequences of performance art and sweeping black-and-white city portraits, D. Smith vividly captures these women’s grotesque realities.

In as combative a political climate as there exists today, the kinds of norm-questioning and voice-unsilencing present in Kokomo are necessary. Whether or not one supports the President-elect, the future of this country, or the livelihoods of these subjects, Kokomo City digs deep into the whys and hows of an underrepresented but disproportionately vulnerable population. It shows how decades of apathetically charged greed and willful ignorance (whether self-imposed or tossed over populations via fearmongering propaganda) continue forcing swaths of people to live unstable, unmanageable lives. The world is against these women at every turn—something has to give. There’s no reason why these people can’t have needed help beyond global systems designed to encourage resource hoarding and general greediness. Though Kokomo can occasionally drag in the monotony of such tragedies, it rips any uncertainties away about the fundamental problems these people face. It’s not their own decisions; it’s the fact they’re intentionally put down financially and socially everywhere. For these jarring representations, Kokomo City is cathartic and profound. Though not for the faint of heart, documentary fans, activists, and empathetic people alike will find many issues and realities to mull over.

Screens Tuesday, 11/19, 7:00 pm @ Coolidge Corner Theatre
Followed by a panel discussion with guests from The Theatre Offensive
Part of the ongoing repertory series: Queering the Screen and Spotlight on Women