On April 18th, 2023, Koko Da Doll was shot and killed in Atlanta, GA. Koko’s death marks at least the 11th violent crime perpetrated against a Black trans women in 2023, a community that has been disproportionally effected by gun violence – especially those who engage in sex work. According to statistics from the Transgender Law Center, the US ranks only third behind Brazil and Mexico for instances of violent crime committed against trans and gender non-conforming communities. It’s important to acknowledge this fact not to dwell on its inherent, anger-inducing tragedy, but because Koko Da Doll is one of the principal subjects in D. Smith’s documentary, Kokomo City, and the shadow of her death hangs heavy over the film, which vivaciously and confrontationally paints a portrait of those fighting to thrive on their own terms.
The fight can often be nerve-wracking, though never defeatist. Kokomo City opens on a dramatic and deceptively tongue-and-cheek note with one of its core subjects, Liyah Mitchell, recounting a violent encounter with a client, complete with borderline cartoonist recreations. Casually reclined across her bed, Mitchell describes how she saw her client carrying a gun and fought him for the weapon. After barely escaping this encounter, the two texted, apparently cleared up their misunderstandings, and as she glibly describes, “decided to f*ck.” Much of Kokomo City proceeds in this gritty but ebulliently vulgar tone. Shot in a black and white, cinema verité style, it may be one of the most overtly stylized and excitingly presented documentaries in recent memory. D. Smith started her career as a record producer before losing work and enduring a stint of homelessness after coming out as trans in 2014. She’s now reinvented herself as a filmmaker with a debut that carries the raucous, unfiltered energy of an artist bounding towards a well-deserved comeback.
Kokomo City’s in-your-face execution, complete with recreations of sexual encounters, abstract animation, cheeky title cards and an intentionally incendiary final shot including full frontal nudity, is important because it helps the film extricate itself from the more rote trappings of the talking head format. Edited by Smith, the film follows four trans women: Koko Da Doll, Daniella Carter, Liyah Mitchell and Dominique Silver, all of whom are sex workers. Each of the subjects face similar challenges but carry dynamically different experiences and goals. The film also includes candid interviews with clients, primarily young men, who reckon with their attractions to trans women despite being “straight.” Smith frames her speakers in the comfort of their own homes, in places like the bathtub or bedroom. Unfiltered and intimate, this allows the viewer to see them simply as people living their lives.
For some, Kokomo City will recall a landmark documentary: Paris Is Burning. Regarded as groundbreaking, more contemporary criticism has been lobbied towards Paris Is Burning for its supposedly outsider perspective since its director is a cisgender woman. It’s a contentious debate, but Kokomo City, with a trans director, no doubt feels more boldly unbridled and uninterested in courting to an outsider audience. Subjects speak to the camera in a way that feels specifically targeted at the viewer as an entity rather than an abstract concept. There’s a definitive anger and frustration present in these interviews, but also a sense of celebration and play. “I just wanted to re-create the narrative of what trans women truly are,” D. Smith told The Guardian, “we’re human, and this is what we look like. We look like you, we’re fun, and we’re vulnerable like you, and we want love like you.”
At a sprightly 73 minutes, Kokomo City is too brisk and lacks the runtime to fully explore some of its most compelling ideas. Clients speak about their own attractions and perceptions of gender and sexuality, but these observations feel cursory and underexplored. One of the film’s more eccentric subjects is a successful record producer who describes his attraction to a trans woman he became acquainted with over social media. Though she’s discussed at length, Smith never gives a sense of who this person is beyond her subject’s somewhat objectifying purview. Though the unbridled style of the film’s cutting often effectively creates a welcoming sense of interpersonal and communal intimacy, it also means that certain sped-over observations feel exactly that.
The harsh realities of these people’s lives creep around the edges of Smith’s work but never overcome it. There’s a solemn section that mourns the murders of trans women by their clients, often in violent reaction to the men’s own perceived shame and internalized homophobia of being seen as “gay.” As much as violence is an acknowledged reality of the film’s world, it’s never a focus. The ultimate takeaway of Kokomo City is an unapologetic declaration of being. It’s a sort of cinematic “I’m here, deal with it” concept that refreshingly subverts both the mainstream handling of trans narratives and the typical construction of documentaries on any subject. The result is a fundamentally open-hearted film that allows its speakers, in vivid and unfiltered words, to define their own stories.
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