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.

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).