REVIEW: Losing Joy

Losing Joy is a short film about a young woman struggling to acknowledge the first anniversary of her sister’s death. Faith [Michelle Tiwo] is lost in grief until close friend and former girlfriend Olivia [Shanay Neusum-James] guides her into acceptance.

Written by Nana Duncan and directed by Juliana Kasumu, Losing Joy is an understated film that pays homage to the realities of grief, love, and chosen bonds. Set within the four walls of a house somewhere in London, the film begins with Olivia coming to visit Faith on the anniversary of her sister Joy’s death. Faith has been avoiding her grief but, through the love of her close friend Olivia, she is supported into a space where she can engage with her mourning.

Losing Joy is a film about grief and grievance. Thematically, it expresses a universal experience. Grief is not linear; it can manifest in isolation, in clinging to community, in love, in sex, in vices, in avoidance. Grief has many faces.

Losing Joy is an example for the TV & Film industry on what true, healthy, affirming representation looks like. It is not a film fixated on queerness or Blackness or the variations of gender expression. The short film is a story of grief that demands to be seen but refuses to feel, told through the lens of a queer, masculine Black British womxn. That distinction is significant. Losing Joy does not position Faith or Olivia as Other; the film does not exist to gratify a gaze other than that of the community who created it and could be affirmed by it. Losing Joy is an intimate portrayal of the value of love, of community, of how mourning can know many timelines and take many shapes.

It is important that Faith and Olivia are queer Black British womxn. It is important that Faith is masculine presenting. Masculine presenting Black British queer womxn too often are erased in the eyes of the media - Losing Joy offers an opportunity for these women to see themselves reflected on the screen.

Sometimes, in the quest for (necessary) representation, we can be stripped of the totality of our being. The result is that elements of our identities, normally those rooted in trauma or fetish, are isolated from our multiplicity and held under a microscopic lens by those generally disinterested in engaging with our wholeness. Sometimes this representation further cements a position of Other, Outsider, Abject, and can exist to satisfy a gaze that is not our own.

The image Juliana Kasumu, Nana Duncan, Michelle Tiwo, and Shanay Neusum-James creates does not mine queer Black British womxn of their trauma, or fetishize their sexuality, but exists to let these womxn know that they are seen. Underneath a plot that centres on grief, the subtext of the film is that of being seen, heard, felt, cared for, understood, and deeply loved. In doing this, Losing Joy is an incredibly validating film for queer Black British womxn. We love, we grieve, we fuck: we exist. Yes, Losing Joy is a film about grief, but it is also a film about the totality of life, written by and for queer Black British womxn.

That Losing Joy was crowdfunded, with over 280 donors raising over £15,000, should serve as a big wake up call to the TV & Film industry. The stories of queer Black British womxn, particularly those who are masculine-presenting, are important. They are necessary. They deserve space.

May Losing Joy be a reminder to all that when space is facilitated for masculine Black British queer womxn to tell their own stories, what they are able to create is intimate, necessary, and honest reflections of the realities of life through their own lens.

Losing Joy premiered as part of BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Festival 2022, which ran from 16th - 27th March.