‘If I Go Will They Miss Me’ Film Review – A Profound, Tender Visual Poem on Black Fatherhood and the Permission to Be Loved

This Article was updated on January 27, 2026 by Erica Vain

Walter Thompson-Hernández’s feature debut “If I Go Will They Miss Me” (expanded from his 2022 Sundance Short Film Jury Award winner) is a work of profound visual poetry. Set in the Nickerson Gardens housing project in Watts, Los Angeles, the film delivers an imaginative yet tender exploration of fatherhood, accountability, and the mythologies we build around those we love—all rendered through imagery so stunning that individual frames could hang in galleries.

The film follows twelve-year-old Lil Ant (Bodhi Dell), a sensitive young artist who struggles to connect with his father Big Ant (J. Alphonse Nicholson), recently released from prison and grappling with his own demons. Danielle Brooks delivers a grounded performance as Lozita, navigating the difficult terrain between supporting her husband’s reintegration and protecting her son. Thompson-Hernández audaciously weaves social realism with magical elements, as spectral visions of boys drift through the neighborhood, revealing invisible threads that bind family, legacy, and place.

What makes this film particularly remarkable is how much it communicates without dialogue. Thompson-Hernández demonstrates extraordinary trust in his visual storytelling, allowing the camera to pause and hover on moments that speak volumes. One such moment arrives when Big Ant discovers the Pegasus wings—complete with tassels—that Lil Ant has been crafting. He puts them on and begins to flap, and in that brief sequence, pure Black boy joy radiates from the screen. There’s pride in his son’s creation, perhaps even inspiration, all flickering across his face before heavier emotions take hold. It’s a fleeting moment of lightness that launches us into darker territory, but its beauty lingers.

This darkness stems from Big Ant’s internal battle: the anguish of feeling unworthy of his son’s admiration. Lil Ant sees his father as a mythical figure, constantly drawing him and weaving his image into Greek mythology—Pegasus, Zeus, figures of impossible power and grace. This artistic obsession becomes a source of conflict; Big Ant cannot reconcile how his son perceives him with how he perceives himself. It takes a pivotal conversation with his best friend to articulate what he needs to hear: let your son love you the way he loves you. Accept it. Stop fighting it. This permission-giving feels revolutionary, particularly for Black men who may never receive such encouragement while struggling to stay on the straight and narrow.

The second visual moment that struck me with full force comes when Lil Ant’s mother walks him home and offers a quiet confession—an acknowledgment of her own shortcomings as a parent, a desire to do better by her son. This scene cuts to the heart of something rarely depicted on screen—accountability within Black families, particularly in communities where patriarchal ideals can lead to men being pedestalized beyond reproach. To witness a mother choose vulnerability with her child, to see her hold herself to the same standard she might hold others, feels genuinely profound. In neighborhoods where matriarchs sometimes rationalize the wrongs of the men in their lives, this moment of clear-eyed accountability becomes quietly radical.

Thompson-Hernández, who has spoken about this film as a letter to his younger self, grounds his magical realism in documentary-level detail. Shot on location in Watts beneath the LAX flight path, the film never loses sight of the material conditions shaping its characters’ lives while simultaneously reaching for something transcendent. These are not poor, ignorant parents—they are people who know right from wrong, who know enough to want better, who champion their son’s artistic expression even as they stumble through their own limitations.

The film thoughtfully explores what good parenting might look like not through idealization but through the messy process of accountability. Parents hold themselves accountable, hold each other accountable, and the community participates in this reckoning. There’s a sense of generational curse-breaking at work, of people consciously choosing to interrupt patterns that might otherwise continue unchallenged.

The casting choices deserve particular recognition. Watching this deeply melanated family navigate this season of their lives with such authenticity and tender care feels both rare and necessary. The nuanced depiction of Black men and boys—vulnerable, flawed, capable of growth, worthy of love—offers something that cinema too often denies them.

“If I Go Will They Miss Me” is a film that demands to be seen, but it particularly calls to Black men and boys who might recognize themselves in its frames. It is a work about our capacity to do better and where we might find the motivation to do so—in this case, through the unwavering, almost divine love of a child who refuses to see anything less than a god in his imperfect father.

The film is currently screening at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival