Ghanaian-American director and photographer debut short film follows the story of a boy on the verge of becoming a man whose father is piling pressure on him to meet his standards of manhood. Inspired by his own experience as a new parent, the film offers a commentary on traditions and rituals and the way they move through generations. Here, Kissi tells writer Joe Zadeh how he wanted to explore the impact our parents have on the person we become, but also the power we have to ultimately make our own decisions about who we want to be.
Most children will undergo a rite of passage at some point as they begin the transition into adulthood. It could be a bar or bat mitzvah, a confirmation or a quinceañera, often honoring the same core message: the new-found freedoms of the young adult, and the weight of responsibility that comes with them. As Western society has gradually become more secular, many of us now mark these periods of growth with less momentous milestones, like drinking your first beer, passing your driving test, or getting your nose pierced in the backroom of a budget jewelry shop. The question is: has something been lost along the way?
That’s one of the many themes being confronted in Joshua Kissi’s debut short film, “It Takes a Village.” Set in Georgia in the middle of the 20th century, it tells the story of Isaiah (played by Jackson Abram), a boy on the verge of becoming a man, whose personality is far more tender and compassionate than that of his father, Mr. Cooke (played by Michael Ealy). While Isaiah is interested in reading books and caring for his pet bird, Mr. Cooke is more concerned with teaching him military discipline and how to hold a gun. Their differing interpretations of masculinity are eventually driven towards a showdown when Mr. Cooke insists that Isaiah fulfills one of their community’s age-old traditions: a journey into the local forest to hunt and kill his first deer.
Kissi is a Ghanaian-American director and photographer currently based in Los Angeles. “It Takes A Village,” he tells me, was informed by his upbringing. “I’m from Ghana, so there is a sense in which I’m speaking to the tribalistic and ritualistic culture of where I come from,” he says. “But I also grew up in the Bronx in New York, in a neighborhood where someone might hand you a gun, or you might see something happen, and you have to decide: What kind of person do you want to be? I was interested in taking these parallels but turning it into a period piece.”
Over the course of his career, Kissi has shot portraits of Questlove, Serena Williams and Giveon, to name a few, and has filmed commercial projects for numerous prestigious brands, from Nike to the NBA. But “It Takes a Village” marks his first foray into narrative short film. The idea came to him as he became a father for the first time. “I found myself thinking about masculinity, and what traits should be passed on,” he explains. “As a parent, you can get this urge for your child to live the same life you did. But kids need to feel like they can dream, fantasize and have their own thoughts. That’s the tension I wanted to explore between Isaiah and Mr. Cooke.”
We all grew up with it—your mum, dad, family, they all have hopes and dreams about who you should be.
Kissi’s mind is a visual one. Before he’d even written the script, he began collating folders of references. “I speak through imagery: colors, contrast, framing and composition,” he says. “Some of the references were my own photography, others were film stills and paintings. A lot of the paintings were by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. The color, tone and how the light would hit … a lot of that came from her work.” The resulting scenes have a vivid and intense chiaroscuro quality to them. While the characters are bathed in soft illumination, the family home they inhabit is enshrouded in a thick veil of darkness. This is only enhanced by the muted tones of the immaculate costume design. “I love the world-building aspect of film,” he says. “I wanted to play into the aesthetic value of that era, and make people feel like they are somewhere they haven’t been before.”
Despite its grand cinematic texture, the film was shot in only three days on a ranch in California. “A lot of people say, for your first film, don’t have children, firearms or animals—we had all three,” says Kissi, laughing. “But I enjoyed having kids on set. They keep you open, fluid and flexible. You need to incorporate elements of play into how you direct. If a kid feels like it’s a job, you won’t get a good performance. I was encouraging them to play and think beyond the box.”
In the film, Isaiah—who had turned pale at the sight of a dead pig at the family dinner table the night before—sets off into the forest with a gun in his hands to fulfill his rite of passage, alongside a group of other boys his age as the fathers wait in their cars. It had rained intensely in the weeks building up to the shoot, and the trees were a deep and radiating green. As the children venture further into the forest, the film becomes increasingly dream-like in its sequences. Does Isaiah eventually kill the deer? That’s something you’ll have to watch to find out. What’s important is that he’s forced to decide something for himself.
“We all grew up with it—your mum, dad, family, they all have hopes and dreams about who you should be,” says Kissi. “But through this whole rite of passage journey, it was finally up to them to make the choice. The world expected something, but by the end they had to make their own decisions. I wanted to show the power of Isaiah’s autonomy: ‘This is what I chose.’”