PARK CITY, UTAH Feb. 1 (UPI) -- If I Go Will They Miss Me, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, is a haunting, poignant film. Writer/director Walter Thompson-Hernandez blends surreal visions with grounded drama so both linger after the film ends.
Big Ant (J. Alphonse Nicholson) returns to Watts, Calif. from incarceration. He struggles to connect with his son, Little Ant (Bodhi Jordan Dell) , or perhaps it is Little Ant who struggles to connect with his father.
One can feel the lived experience of If I Go Will They Miss Me. Thompson-Hernandez depicts interpersonal events with specificity without writing overwrought dramatic scenes.
Visually, he crafts evocative images that reflect characters' emotional states. Big Ant encounters a group of boys in the middle of the street just standing there with their arms outstretched.
Little Ant is studying mythology in school so he draws parallels between his parents and the gods. Big Ant is Poseidon in a toga with a trident.
