Hailed as an authentic voice for a new generation of British youth, poet, photographer, and filmmaker Caleb Femi purges out anger, frustration, and sorrow in a new project exploring masculinity and mental health.

The iconic Fredd Wigg and John Walsh residential towers in East London offer a compelling backdrop to the film’s ensemble of young men who engage in displays of kinetic kinship. Through movement and choreography, they dispel negative emotions built up over years of trauma and disenfranchisement. In resistance to cultural media, which paradoxically tends to fetishize and demonize young men who grew up in “the endz,” Femi is part of a growing movement of artists using visual narratives to normalize care and affection shown between Black men on screen.

“Again & Again centers escapism into fantasy as a method of self-care, self-development and celebrates young men coming together to create a support system by and for one another,” says Femi, whose debut 2020 poetry collection Poor explores the trials, tribulations, dreams, and joys of young Black boys in twenty-first-century Peckham, South London. “I wanted to place an emphasis on this celebration because historically the emotional labor of unpacking and processing emotions has been shared—even carried—by other members of society.”

Self-described as a “merchant of happiness,” in this film Femi presents his audience with pockets of magic that can only be shared by one who has lived in the seams. His imagination pours forth in the form of visual effects and surreal animation in a project that can be distilled as a message of love to his community.

“In Again & Again, I combine multiple artistic disciplines—film, dance, poetry, music— to capture the range of emotions that leave most men uncomfortable to embrace or process well: anger, grief, heartbreak, humiliation,” says Femi. “The film is my offering to the discourse of masculinity, of Blackness and of mental health.”

Caleb Femi was the first Young People’s Laureate for London, between 2016 and 2018. During this time he used art, words, and local activism to raise the profile of key issues facing the capital’s youth. As a writer, photographer, and filmmaker, Femi has garnered fans such as I May Destroy You’s Michaela Cole and received multiple accolades from The New Statesman, Financial Times, Guardian, Observer, Rough Trade, and the BBC.