LOS ANGELES (AP) — Six years ago, jet fuel was dumped from the sky onto a working-class city near Los Angeles International Airport, spattering onto children at an elementary school. For writer and director Walter Thompson-Hernández, who grew up nearby, the incident sparked a coming-of-age story that grapples with the contradictions of life under the LAX flight path.
His new film, “If I Go Will They Miss Me,” stars Oscar nominee Danielle Brooks and opened in U.S. theaters Friday. It follows a family searching for connection in the LA neighborhood of Watts.
“There’s 800 airplanes that fly into LAX every single day. What that does for us is it gives us 800 opportunities to dream, right? But with that dream also comes a terror,” said the filmmaker, citing his own asthma.
“This movie is about how we juxtapose so many different things, like love and pain, healing and hurt … how the same person that can help you to grow can also strip you of your innocence.”
The new film expands on the former journalist’s award-winning short film of the same title, which he began writing shortly after a Delta Air Lines jet traveling from Los Angeles to Shanghai in 2020 dumped 15,000 gallons of fuel over the city of Cudahy and nearby neighborhoods because it was experiencing engine trouble. A lawsuit filed by teachers at Park Avenue Elementary School against the airline said the jet fuel drizzled down like raindrops, causing skin and lung irritation for both teachers and children. Delta last year agreed to a $79 million settlement.
“For me, what that did was it just reminded me of how complicated and how beautiful and how heartbreaking it is to exist and to love under the LAX flight path,” Thompson-Hernández said.
The film transforms Thompson-Hernández’s childhood longing for his father into myth
The film follows a young boy named Lil Ant, played by newcomer Bodhi Jordan Dell, who views his distant father with a reverent admiration, likening him to Poseidon and Odysseus. Brooks and J. Alphonse Nicholson play Lil Ant’s parents, Lozita and Big Ant — loosely based on Thompson-Hernández’s real-life friends.
Lil Ant is a version of the filmmaker. He remembers growing up not knowing his father and creating mythologies about where and who he was.
“I created this like larger-than-life figure,” he said. “And what I found was that I wasn’t the only one in my neighborhood who was doing that … I think that’s what’s universal about this movie is that we have a boy here who wants so deeply to be loved by a father who doesn’t have the tools to love him. And in spite of that, he still sees him as a Greek god. You know, how beautiful is that? How tragic is that?”
“If I Go Will They Miss Me” is a meditative film layered in symbolism from Greek mythology, as well as recurring images of planes, ocean waves and hues of purple and blue. It’s a love letter to Los Angeles, both visually and sonically, as Thompson-Hernández bookends the film with the city’s rich blue sky, which he says serves as a representation of hope and an ode to his hometown.
Brooks, who earned an Oscar nomination for her supporting role in the 2023 musical “The Color Purple,” says working on Thompson-Hernández’s film was a “breath of fresh air” that allowed her to showcase a different side of her craft.
“I want to see it win,” she said about the project. “I just want people to know that there’s something out there in this art form that can help you see yourself. And also help you reflect on yourself.”
The filmmaker has spent his career chronicling Southern California communities
Thompson-Hernández’s short film earned him a jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2022. In his previous work as a journalist for The New York Times, he showcased Southern California subcultures, highlighting his own dual Black American and Mexican-American identity. His 2020 nonfiction book “The Compton Cowboys” focused on a group of Black American cowboys keeping Black Western heritage alive in the city.
The filmmaker says some might look at his work as a “highlight of overlooked communities,” but to him, he is simply documenting the families he grew up seeing every day.
“My world is full of people who are loving and beautiful and complicated, and in need of stories that reflect how multifaceted they are and how they’re able to dream and love and repair,” he said.
Repair is at the center of the story in “If I Go Will They Miss Me,” which Thompson-Hernández hopes will offer audiences a chance to explore what it looks like for a younger generation to create a future that includes hope and healing.
Thompson-Hernández recalls a scene where Lozita apologizes to Lil Ant for not protecting him during a tense interaction between him and his father.
“I just didn’t grow up in a home where people apologized to each other,” he said. “How do we not just break the chain, but create a new chain that feels healthy? … How lucky am I to explore these questions that I’ve had my entire life that now are able to come out in a movie.”
