Release Date: September 11, 2026 limited; September 18 wider release
Runtime: 95 minutes (1h 35min)
Rated: R – for language and thematic elements
Production Companies: Spark Features, Further Adventures, Cedar Road, LinLay Productions, Merino Films
Producers: Josh Peters, Saba Zerehi, Ben Stillman
Cinematography: Michael Fernandez
Editing: Walter Thompson-Hernández & Daysha Broadway
Music/Composer: Malcolm Parson
If I Go Will They Miss Me (2026)
Director & Writer: Walter Thompson-Hernández
Cast: J. Alphonse Nicholson (Big Ant), Bodhi Dell (Lil Ant), Danielle Brooks (Lozita) Myles Bullock (JJ), Bre-Z (Jenn)
Every child builds a mythology around the parent who isn’t there. In Walter Thompson-Hernández’s feature debut, If I Go Will They Miss Me, that mythology comes straight out of Homer.
Childlike wonder is usually imagined as boundless, a mind so open that the possibilities for how it might process the world are endless. As adults, we can compartmentalize and tell reality from fiction, but the curiosity of a child is far less restrained. It’s why Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and other legends and mythical figures are so woven into childhood. Children are inherently trusting, inclined to see the world through its brightest lens. Unfortunately, that isn’t always reality, especially in today’s landscape, and especially when the adults raising them are inconsiderate or neglectful.
Thompson-Hernández takes on the gaps a sensitive, artistic, imaginative child fills in when his father is absent for a good portion of his childhood, years that are formative and essential. Big Ant (J. Alphonse Nicholson) is returning home from prison to his wife, Lozita (Danielle Brooks), and his son, Lil Ant (Bodhi Dell), now 12. Thompson-Hernández doesn’t specify how long Big Ant has been gone. He depicts the absence as a pattern rather than a single stretch of time, which makes it feel lived-in rather than circumstantial.
Lil Ant is deep into Greek mythology at school, particularly The Odyssey, and from that same imaginative mind he casts his father as Odysseus, equating his constant absence with a hero away at war. As the story progresses, the hero is elevated into something more, and Lil Ant begins to envision his father as Poseidon, a god. It’s a clever choice, since in Homer it’s Poseidon who keeps Odysseus from getting home. Whether or not that irony is intentional, it adds a layer to a boy worshipping the very figure that stands between a man and his family.
The setting is Watts, Los Angeles, near the airport, where planes constantly pass overhead. Where another person would hear noise and annoyance, Lil Ant sees escape and possibility. His relationship with the planes mirrors his relationship with his father: both are more truthful about his limited options for getting out of his circumstances than they are about any real escape.
Thompson-Hernández uses surrealism to show how Lil Ant sees and experiences the world, even when the circumstances are far from ideal. At the same time, he shows how the adults living those same circumstances see them through a different filter, a rawer and grittier one. This is where the film’s craft does the heavy lifting. The cinematography leans into purples and blues, giving Lil Ant’s perspective a dreamlike, surreal quality. Thompson-Hernández and cinematographer Michael Fernandez, who also shot the 2021 short that launched this feature, strike a rare balance. They anchor the film in everyday reality and save the surreal flourishes for the moments when they’re needed to show the world as Lil Ant sees it. The fantasy never takes over. It’s the lens a child uses to get through what’s in front of him.
The film also stays mostly within Watts, which keeps it intimate and close to home. It branches out only a few times, and the most important departure is the beach, where Lil Ant and Big Ant share a deeply intimate memory. The beach becomes a recurring setting, and rightly so. It’s central to Lil Ant’s formation and idealization of his father, and it ties directly into the Poseidon mythology. The sea is where the god lives, and it’s where the boy last felt close to his father.
Big Ant is a man at odds with himself. Nicholson plays him as a constant tug-of-war between a real desire to be involved in his family’s life and a selfishness that keeps pulling him away. The performance lives in that conflict, and it’s why Thompson-Hernández makes it so clear how uncomfortable Big Ant is with his son’s perception of him. When he finds Lil Ant’s drawings of the image being constructed of him, a figure shaped by his absence and his son’s artistic spirit, you can see him recognize the gap between the god on the page and the man standing there.
Hand in hand with this godlike image is Pegasus, the son of Poseidon in the mythology Lil Ant is learning. As he begins building a Pegasus costume, with wings that slide over his arms, it becomes a symbol of wanting to fly away, much like the planes he constantly sees and hears. He isn’t only imagining escape. He’s physically building something for those feelings while also building on the idea that he’s the son of an almighty god.
Lozita may be the film’s most pivotal figure, and Danielle Brooks gives her the weight of someone caught between a rock and a hard place. She knows the truth about Big Ant and his behavior beyond what Lil Ant idolizes, and she has to manage her relationship with him alongside her son’s constant questioning of his presence. She repeatedly acknowledges Big Ant as a work in progress while staying aware of how intensely Lil Ant loves him. That love lets her son fill in the gaps, a luxury she doesn’t have, because she experiences the whole truth. Brooks plays this restraint well. So much of Lozita is held back, and the performance communicates what she can’t say out loud.
Lil Ant, meanwhile, is a boy with enormous feelings and a nuanced way of seeing the world and his father through an imaginative lens. Yet he struggles to truly connect with him, largely because of his father’s faltering presence. Bodhi Dell captures that tension between imagination and longing, and between idolizing someone and actually reaching them.
Throughout the film, there are glimpses of Big Ant’s potential involvement in his family’s life, but they never amount to anything until proactive moves are made, specifically by Lozita. Those glimpses are just that, and that is the problem. It’s evident at times that Big Ant wants the best for his son, but his actions are isolated rather than consistent. Presence does not equate to consistency, and that is what Thompson-Hernández exhibits through the conflicted, nuanced Big Ant.
The film also includes JJ (Myles Bullock), Big Ant’s friend, who acts as a pillar of support as he tries to reintegrate into his family and everyday life.
Ultimately, If I Go Will They Miss Me tells a story that is far too common: a father who isn’t there, and a child trying to make sense of it with a developing, artistic mind. It never looks away from the harsher truths beneath the fantasy. What makes it work is the nuance Thompson-Hernández gives Lil Ant, Big Ant, and Lozita. None of them are villains or saints, just people doing what they can with what they have. It’s a deeply intimate story, a microcosm of how families cope with missing parents, and it leaves you with an uncomfortable truth: a child can build a god out of a father’s absence, but only a father’s consistent presence can make him real.