The Last Golden Hour

As the writer and director of this film, I created this story out of my own childhood experiences. Although the characters in the film are fictional, they are based on me and my friends and family during this period of my life. The main character, Dominique, an introverted but imaginative young Black girl, has the same traits I did during that time of my life in middle school. Although the events of the story take place within a few days, what Dominique goes through is essentially what my classmates and I went through in the seventh grade during the time when the death of Trayvon Martin was national news. As much as we--l—may have wanted to escape that news and the subsequent realization that, despite the societal progress we have made, Black people would constantly be viewed differently than they see themselves, we could not. The news was pervasive, disruptive, and almost dominated every conversation, every moment. Yet, I had to have that realization just as many Black children eventually have the same realization. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and in the wake of the national reckoning over the murder of George Floyd, I wrote this script to portray that phenomenon that Black children go through all too often when they see the world for what it truly is. Every time something like this happens in the world, I go back to this time in my life that the film shows and ruminate on the loss of innocence and the subconscious choice to dive further into imagination, because that is where I felt safe, happy, and powerful, just like the Dominique character. I think about the Black children who come to the same realization and make similar choices. This film is how this phenomenon happened for me.

Cierra is a filmmaker and storyteller born, bred, and based in New Orleans. She has a BA in English with a minor in Digital Filmmaking from Loyola University New Orleans. Developing a love for storytelling at a young age, she has written stories primarily in speculative fiction genres for a young adult audience. Through filmmaking, she hopes to explore stories that often go untold through perspectives that often go unheard. Her debut film, “Looking at the Edges”, a short documentary about New Orleans East, was an official selection of the Crescent City Film and Arts Festival and the Black Film Festival of New Orleans.