Name: If I Go Will They Miss Me
Released: 2025-12-05T15:26:57.896Z

United States202592 minEnglish

Twelve-year-old Lil Ant struggles to connect with his father when he begins to see surreal, almost spectral visions of boys drifting around his neighborhood. Their presence reveals a link between father and son, laying bare the threads that bind family, legacy, and place.

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Set in the working-class Watts neighborhood in South Los Angeles, writer-director Walter Thompson-Hernández’s moving family drama focuses on a fraught father-son relationship. Big Ant is just out of prison and struggling to reconnect with his wife, Lozita (Danielle Brooks), and adolescent son, Lil Ant, a sensitive artist yearning for a role model. Adapted from his acclaimed short (2022 Sundance Film Festival, Short Film Jury Award: U.S. Fiction), Thompson-Hernández audaciously combines social and magical realism, charting the emotional trajectory of a conflicted dad and his restless son. Dense with allusions to Greek mythology, but grounded in documentary detail, the film has its head in the clouds without losing sight of the street-level conditions that shape its characters’ lives. If I Go Will They Miss Me is a loving, lyrical portrait of life under the LAX flight path. — MC

Available in person. Also available online for the public (January 29–February 1) and credentialed press and industry (January 28–February 1).

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Credits

Director(s)
Walter Thompson-Hernández
Screenwriter
Walter Thompson-Hernández
Producer
Josh Peters
Saba Zerehi
Ben Stillman
Cinematographer
Michael Fernandez
Production Design By
Marina Perez
Costume Designer
Maya Edmond
Edited By
Walter Thompson-Hernández
Daysha Broadway
Executive Producers
Jennifer J. Pritzker
Robina Riccitiello
Isaac Ericson
Meredith Crowley
Jonathan Weiner
Grace Lay
Sakurako Fisher
Tyler Bagley
Jon Batiste
Ryan Lynn
Composer
Malcolm Parson
Casting Director
Alan Luna
Principal Cast
Danielle Brooks
J. Alphonse Nicholson

Contact
Saba Zerehi
sabazerehi@gmail.com

Meet the Artist

Walter Thompson-Hernández

Walter Thompson-Hernández is a Los Angeles–based writer-director and Sundance Institute lab alum. His Sundance Film Festival award-winning short, If I Go Will They Miss Me, launched his feature adaptation. He directed Netflix’s Untold: Shooting Guards and debuted his first narrative feature, Kites, at the Tribeca Film Festival, earning a special jury prize for its bold storytelling acclaim.

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