Lu­mi­na, a film writ­ten and pro­duced by T&T-born Gi­no McK­oy and cur­rent­ly stream­ing on Ama­zon Prime Video, Google Play, and YouTube, fea­tures a group of mod­ern-day young adults on a jour­ney for the truth.

The film, which de­buted in the­atres last year and has been show­cased at packed fan gath­er­ings like Com­ic Con New York and Mon­ster­palooza, was the fo­cus of a re­cent ar­ti­cle in Forbes mag­a­zine by se­nior con­trib­u­tor Marc Berman.

Star­ring Ru­pert Lazarus (Re­quiem), Eleanor Williams, and Acad­e­my Award nom­i­nee Er­ic Roberts (The Dark Knight, The Ex­pend­ables), Lu­mi­na fol­lows Alex (Lazarus), whose girl­friend Ta­tiana (Williams) mys­te­ri­ous­ly van­ish­es in a flash of light. De­ter­mined to find her, Alex and his friends em­bark on a jour­ney from Los An­ge­les in­to the desert, where they un­cov­er the dark se­crets of a Deep Un­der­ground Mil­i­tary Base (DUMB). What be­gins as a search for an­swers quick­ly turns in­to a fight for sur­vival as they en­counter sin­is­ter forces, gov­ern­ment con­spir­a­cies, and oth­er­world­ly be­ings.

Blend­ing el­e­ments of psy­cho­log­i­cal thrillers, sci­ence fic­tion, and hor­ror, the set de­signs and spe­cial ef­fects en­hance the nar­ra­tive. Lu­mi­na is the first sci­ence fic­tion en­try to be shot in Mo­roc­co, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the moun­tain­ous re­gions of Mar­rakech and Ouarza­zate, pro­vid­ing it with a dis­tinct cin­e­mat­ic ap­pear­ance.

“At first, I want­ed to do a sci-fi com­e­dy, but I al­so want­ed to show what the im­pact is psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly fol­low­ing an ab­duc­tion,” said McK­oy.

“The film is tongue in cheek at times, but it deals with se­ri­ous top­ics and un­ex­plained phe­nom­e­na. At the core, this is a sto­ry of re­al­i­ty, love, and sur­vival. And be­cause it was a mix­ture of dif­fer­ent gen­res, it took some con­vinc­ing to ex­plain what my vi­sion was for the film.”

Born in T&T and raised in Cana­da, McK­oy’s par­ents, Hud­son and Lyn­da McK­oy, are mu­si­cians, bank­ing pro­fes­sion­als and the founders of Goldove En­ter­tain­ment.

“I ma­jored in po­lit­i­cal sci­ence in col­lege, which was al­ways one of my great in­ter­ests. And I stud­ied world re­li­gion, spe­cial­is­ing in Ju­daism and Chris­tian­i­ty,” he said.

“I al­so had clas­si­cal train­ing and grew up sur­round­ed by mu­sic. But af­ter en­ter­ing the busi­ness world work­ing for a fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion, my cre­ative side took over and I even­tu­al­ly segued in­to mu­sic and film­mak­ing. I want­ed to per­form and pro­duce the type of mu­sic I could in­clude in my movies, which I do through­out Lu­mi­na.”

In 2008, McK­oy’s ca­reer in mu­sic got a boost af­ter he met Cana­di­an sound en­gi­neer/pro­duc­er Nick Blag­o­na and they be­gan to work on his de­but pop rock al­bum. In 2010, the project was tak­en over by leg­endary Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­er David Ker­shen­baum, which re­sult­ed in his de­but al­bum Step For­ward.

“I had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­pete on Amer­i­ca’s Got Tal­ent, but I did not want to sing any­body else’s mu­sic. I didn’t want to por­tray my­self as a cov­er artist,” he said.

At the same time, McK­oy start­ed work­ing on screen­plays for two fea­ture films, while al­so launch­ing a mer­chan­dis­ing line, Ly­d­gio Fash­ions, co-found­ed with his moth­er, Lyn­da.

In 2015, McK­oy wrote the script for Lit­tle Mizz In­no­cent, which fol­lowed a UN in­ter­preter en­tan­gled in a con­flict be­tween the FBI and a crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“With Lu­mi­na, we ini­tial­ly had a dis­tri­b­u­tion deal with By­ron Allen’s En­ter­tain­ment Stu­dios for a wide re­lease, but COVID hit and every­thing was put on hold,” McK­oy re­called.

“So, we spoke to oth­er in­vestors we knew and I start­ed scout­ing lo­ca­tions where we could safe­ly shoot the film, which end­ed up be­ing Mo­roc­co.”

Not with­out its hic­cups, in­clud­ing the pan­dem­ic-re­lat­ed de­lays and a cast and crew turnover, get­ting Lu­mi­na off the ground was a no easy ma­noeu­vre. In ad­di­tion to writ­ing, di­rect­ing, pro­duc­ing and singing the songs in the film, McK­oy co-com­posed the sound­track and served as vi­su­al ef­fects su­per­vi­sor.

“Over­all, it’s been a mixed re­sponse. Some peo­ple don’t un­der­stand Lu­mi­na and I think some of the crit­ics un­fair­ly mis­judged it be­cause this is a sci-fi com­e­dy. Every­thing was in­ten­tion­al when I set up scenes and,” he said.

“I grew up in the days where you had movies like The Naked Gun, Blaz­ing Sad­dles and Bil­ly Crys­tal in City Slick­ers. And I want­ed some­thing lighter, some­thing fun­ny in a par­o­dy sense, and all with a bit of a love in­ter­est in there.”