“I wish you all could feel my heartbeat. It is beating out of my chest,” says a breathless Danielle Brooks. “I know that’s because of Walter Thompson-Hernández. You are brilliant, man. You are brilliant,” adds the Oscar-nominated actress moments after the premiere of her If I Go Will They Miss Me at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

She is completely justified in her reverence for Walter Thompson-Hernández. The self-proclaimed “blaxican” writer/director of If I Go Will They Miss Me created one of the most beautifully artistic and nuanced films to screen at the 2026 festival. If I Go Will They Miss Me centers on Lil Ant (Bodhi Dell), a curious and imaginative boy, and his relationship with his complicated and reserved dad, Big Ant (J. Alphonse Nicholson) during a critical time for them both.

Lil Ant is about as eager as a son can be about being reunited with his previously incarcerated father. Lil Ant idolizes Big Ant so much that he compares his dad to Poseidon, the trident-yielding Greek-God of the sea, with the power to shake the earth. His father, however, struggles to see himself, period, let alone as a deity. And if we are being honest, Big Ant doesn’t exactly handle the praise well.

“How beautiful was it to see black bodies in this way?” asks Brooks. “How dope is that [to see us] as Greek gods? To see the brother holding his baby and his arms? Oh, my God.  We don’t have enough of those images.”

Again, she’s right.

The story is set in the time just after Big Ant’s reintroduction to his family. Not only is Lil Ant coming into his own and discovering his own individuality, he is doing it alongside his father who is rediscovering what it is to be a man, a father, and a witness to his boy coming of age. Oozing with love, Brooks’ mama Lozita (Danielle Brooks) creates a fortress of a foundation around her family.

What truly sets If I Go Will They Miss Me apart – despite its familiar story of a young black boy and his coming of age in the proverbial hood – is the utter beauty it finds in community. With Hollywood’s history of denigrating poor Black communities, it’s downright audacious to present life in the projects with such care and affection. What’s more is that Walter Thompson-Hernández does it with a pitch-perfect tone that can only be born out of an authentic experience.

“I feel like for me, that sort of lyricism that I hope you find in this movie and that you observe and you take in, it’s not one that we created, but it’s one that already exists,” said Walter Thompson-Hernández at the film’s premiere. It’s very real to him, taking place where we grew up and recounting some of his boyhood musings.

“It’s incredibly personal to me,” says Thompson-Hernández. “I was Bodhi’s age once, and I would look up at the sky, and I’d have these sort of questions about the world. [On] one hand, these beautiful, mysterious airplanes would bring joy and questions about the universe. And [then] we all have asthma at the same time because of these airplanes.” Thompson-Hernández says, referencing toxic fuel dumps made along the Los Angeles International Airport flight path. He even references in the fim perhaps the most notable one, a recent settlement by Delta Airlines in which the airline agreed to pay $79-million for a 2020 incident where they dumped 15,000 gallons of fuel over a Los Angeles residential and school area near LAX.

Fitting that something like a plane, admired for its greatness, heft, and possibilities, actually has the power to do harm – not unlike a relationship with a father. And that is the other part of what makes If I Go Will They Miss Me so unique – the ability to show the humanity of flawed fathers.

That sentiment was not lost on J. Alphonse Nicholson. “That’s what this film did for me. It made me stand up to the plate even more as a father and a husband,” he shared at the premiere. Fighting back tears, the father of one could not help but juxtapose his own experience on the film against the current political climate. “You see those brown babies on that screen, and we see what’s happening in America today. You pray for those babies. You see that little boy with ICE and his hand on his backpack, you pray for those babies. Forgive me for being so emotional, but that’s what this film does. When we made this film, those things weren’t quite where they are now.”

A few things weren’t what they are now. And that includes the film itself. Walter Thompson-Hernández first brought If I Go Will They Miss Me to Sundance in 2022 as a short film, where it won the Short Film Jury Award. Thompson-Hernández then joined the Sundance screenwriting and directing labs to hone it into a feature.

That is after being named one of Variety’s “Top Ten Storytellers to Watch” in 2021 after work on his award-winning podcast “California Love.” And again named by Variety as one of ten directors to keep your eyes on in 2025. Not to mention his penning of the award-winning book, The Compton Cowboys: The New Generation of Cowboys in America’s Urban Heartland.

This Blaxican hermano clearly has a lot of talent, and his voice and storytelling ability are crucial to the complexion of filmmaking today. Here’s hoping he gets more support after Sundance to bring this and future films to audiences across the country.

If I Go Will They Miss Me is seeking distribution stateside at the time of this posting.