Kokomo City (2023) | Directed by D. Smith

D. Smith’s Kokomo City, a documentary about Black transgender sex workers, opens with a story from Liyah, one of the film’s participants, about a client who came to see her, only for her to discover that he was carrying a gun. She wrestles the gun from him and forces him to leave her home before learning that he’s a well-known rapper in the Atlanta area carrying the weapon for protection. She immediately texts him back and asks him if he wants to come back over. And Liyah’s entire retelling is punctuated with quick cuts to recreations of the story – a choice that energizes the storytelling and enhances Liyah’s inherent humor.

This brilliant opening sets the tone of Kokomo City right at the start. This is a film that is playful and funny, frank and heartfelt. The four trans women who open their lives up for the film are refreshingly honest about their lives as trans sex workers. There’s no romanticization, but at no time does the film dip into trauma tourism either. Smith shows the mundane sides of these women’s lives, from putting on makeup and getting dressed to simply spending time with friends. But there is also so much joy captured by Smith’s stunning black-and-white cinematography. We see the film’s participants celebrating their communities, their romantic relationships, and the comfort they feel with themselves as they move through the world.

The film also explores transphobia, homophobia, and misogyny within the Black community through a series of interviews with Black men about their relationships with trans women. This provides Kokomo City with an important perspective, finding deep insecurity beneath layers of hatred and abuse. Daniella, one of the films participants, explains that the men she sleeps with are there to exploit trans women, to fetishize them. And the film never shies away from this exploitation and fetishization, the abuse or the danger that these women find themselves in through the course of their work. Some of the stories that the participants tell are harrowing, heartbreaking – but Smith is careful to never allow us to believe that the trauma and the pain is all there is to these women.

In the end, Kokomo City is vibrant, joyous, and fully alive – much like the women who participated in its making. Between the conversations with Black trans sex workers, the recreations of stories from the women, and the interviews with those on the periphery of the sex work, we’re left with an honest and frank portrait of the life these women lead – their struggles, but especially their hopes, dreams, and joys.

Where to Watch

Four Daughters (2023) | Directed by Kaouther Ben Hania

Nearly an hour into Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters, one of the actors hired to perform in the film’s reenactment with Olfa Hamrouni and her two youngest daughters, Eya and Tayssir Chikhaoui, calls for the cameras to stop rolling and asks for a private conversation with Hania about the scene. Eya expresses her frustration to the camera. Why should he be worried about the scene and how it will affect her when she’s already processed these moments with mental health professionals? She has even engaged in this type of role play as part of her therapy.

This brief scene gets to the heart of the unique cinematic experience that is Hania’s Four Daughters. Much like the documentaries of Robert Greene, Hania uses interview, conversation, recreation, and interactions between the actors and the participants as a form of cinematic therapy for Olfa and her two daughters as they explore the disappearance of the family’s oldest two daughters/sisters, Ghofrane and Rahma. Actors are brought to fill in for the missing daughters, to play the roles of various men enforcing the rigid patriarchal systems of oppression these women and girls faced, and to play Olfa herself when the scenes’ emotions become too intense to bear. The playfulness of acting exercises (there are wonderfully warm and tender sequences between Eya, Tayssir, and the two actresses portraying their sisters) and the technical craft of rehearsal creates an open space for tremendous emotional release and revelation.

Even amid verité shots of rehearsal and conversation, off-the-cuff conversations and interviews, Hania and her cinematographer, Farouk Laaridh, capture stunning images, wrapped in the lush blue-green color palette of the film’s interiors. The use of mirrors throughout provides strong thematic resonances, especially in an early sequence showing Hend Sabry, the actress portraying Olfa, looking into a mirror and rehearsing her “character’s” mannerisms. The film holds a mirror up to Olfa, exploring her relationship with all her children, and in coming to understand and portray her during this series of reenactments, Hend becomes the individual most able to provide that reflection.

In fact, this reflection is part of what makes Four Daughters so compelling. The relationship between Olfa and her children is marked by patterns of generational abuse under patriarchal systems and the ways survivors seek escape from their torment. By portraying Olfa in the reenactments, Hend is able to gently challenge the mother when the film explores how Olfa’s own religious fundamentalism has disastrous consequences in her daughters’ lives. And when the standard teenage methods of rebellion didn’t work, the daughters chose an even more extreme form of fundamentalism to gain power within their family system, leading to tragedy.

Four Daughters may be a difficult and heartbreaking watch, but this journey into healing and understanding is so beautiful and deeply moving.

Where to Watch

Fugue (2018) | Directed by Agnieszka Smoczyńska

 4/5

Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s Fugue is a gripping and moving drama (with touches of the surreal and uncanny) about the roles society forces on women and the toll that takes on their health, their relationships, their families, and their children. While this story of a woman with memory loss who has been reunited with her family after two years might be more straightforward than Smoczyńska’s previous film (the delirious and delightful mermaid horror musical The Lure), the emotional terrain it covers is rich and powerful, continuing her exploration of the limitations men attempt to place upon the women in their lives and the need for women to forge a new path for themselves. The two central performances are rich and honest and nuanced, with lovely subtleties and an emotional vulnerability that allows us to follow every beat of these two spouses potentially finding their way back to one another after such a long absence. Gabriela Muskała, pulling double-duty as the film’s lead and writer, has crafted a narrative that in the hands of lesser storytellers would be melodramatic or trite, but here is filled with mystery, poignancy, and even humor. Smoczyńska finds moments to let her stylistic flourishes shine through – a beach that suddenly becomes empty in a moment of horror, a moody and blue-lit silent dancefloor as characters begin to reconnect, an MRI of Alicja’s brain that transforms before our eyes into flowers – moments that help us connect with Alicja’s emotional and mental state, preparing us for the film’s powerful revelations and final moments. It may be more grounded than The Lure, but it’s an accomplished and powerful follow-up that shows Smoczyńska’s true interest in the challenges women face in society.

Where to Watch

Copenhagen Cowboy (2023) | Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn

 4.5/5

Nicolas Winding Ref’s Copenhagen Cowboy employs the filmmaker’s trademark visual and aesthetic style in a stunning and evocative manner, all while transplanting them into a serialized format. It’s a work that is more interested in creating mood and atmosphere; the plot becomes secondary in Refn’s desire to help us settle into a more contemplative headspace through the measured pacing, the time to breath and ruminate during conversations, and the rhythms of the score – paired with the shifting neon hues that draw us deeper into the atmosphere. Angela Bundalovic’s performance as Miu is outstanding, impassive and silent for so much of the series, yet conveying incredible emotion with the shift of her eyes or a turn of her head. Refn’s focus on mood is helped by the very slow reveal of his protagonist’s history, her abilities, and her eventual plans. And for those with patience enough to engage with the story that is being presented here, there’s something endlessly compelling about the way Miu attempts to protect and avenge those who are being exploited by the powerful in a system that provides few options to the undocumented, women, and immigrants. In a work that uses the exploitation of others as its inciting incident, it’s refreshing so see that Refn doesn’t shoot these scenes exploitively, or for the audience’s visual pleasure or gratification. At the same time, the skewering of male bravado and narcissism is sharp, pointed, and so accurate. This blending of the supernatural mystery and the crime thriller, alongside philosophical ruminations on exploitation, vengeance and justice, and the fragile egos of men is a unique and singular viewing experience.