On a hospital mattress, surrounded by white partitions, beneath fluorescent lights, and a hum of medical equipment, filmmaker and comic Jared “J.” Snow lifted his telephone and pressed report. Hooked to an array of life-sustaining tubes and flanked by medical specialists, he didn’t but know that this straightforward act of recording could be the act of daring braveness that finally saved him.
“Truthfully, I used to be in a low place after I began recording on my telephone,” stated Snow. “My recordings have been meant as a goodbye, one thing to depart behind within the occasion that the illness finally received.”
Premiering on the Landmark Theatre in Hollywood, California, Feb. 20 and 23, “You Look High-quality” is a groundbreaking new documentary, providing an intimate, first-person account of residing with sickle cell illness. The documentary by Snow, co-produced by Marlon Wayans, is the primary of its form to show the lens inward on sickle cell illness, giving viewers a susceptible, never-before-seen take a look at a lifetime spent behind hospital curtains.
“If my sickness was going to be misunderstood by the world, I made a decision to begin documenting the reality,” Snow stated.
In January 2025, earlier than Hollywood took discover, Snow had constructed a following on YouTube and social media, crafting daring sketch comedies formed by the period of Dave Chappelle.
“I’ve at all times wanted to create,” Snow recounted. “I used to be the child holding court docket at recess.”
However, at this essential juncture in 2025, medically, he was going through important issues, financially, he was struggling, and emotionally, he was sinking.
Snow’s personal revolution started with an e-mail. As soon as he edited all his footage, he despatched early drafts of the movie in every single place, to associates, to main creators, to anybody who would possibly pay attention.
Sooner or later, his telephone rang. Wayans, calling from trip in Italy, stated: “This movie is unimaginable. What do you want?”
The celebrated comic then introduced in producer Rick Alvarez, increasing the venture’s attain.
Intimate life moments, recording his intense struggles, allowed Snow to faucet into his inventive abilities as he pushed by way of painful therapy in direction of therapeutic.
“Filming restored my will to reside,” he stated.
Peeling Again the Hospital Curtain
Disproportionately affecting individuals of colour, sickle cell illness is a hereditary blood dysfunction that contorts crimson blood cells from smooth, spherical carriers of oxygen into inflexible, sickled shapes. The result’s excruciating ache, organ injury, persistent fatigue, extreme psychological pressure, and shortened life expectancy.
Nivia Charles, identified with probably the most aggressive type of sickle cell illness at delivery, calls the illness “relentless” and “wholly unpredictable.”
“And too usually, it’s to a big diploma fully misunderstood,” added Charles, a fourth-year scholar at Howard College.
Understanding the challenges of sickle cell warriors firsthand, Charles defined that the intentionality and realness revealed in “You Look High-quality” will assist foster additional understanding in regards to the illness.
“It’s excruciating to undergo having sickle cell illness. This illness can carry you to your knees in ache, in sorrow, in grief, in abject disappointment,” she associated.
“It appears like one thing is taking away your company. The one factor that you need to have dominion over, your physique, you don’t.”
In “You Look High-quality,” Snow, with unimaginable vulnerability, seeks to boldly chronicle what happens within the lifetime of an individual who, to most, seems superb.
“I saved my digital camera filming as lengthy needles pierced my pores and skin, the numerous instances I used to be hooked to tubes and willed myself to get off the bed and stroll, and as I watched gallons of my very own blood withdrawn from my veins and changed with a stranger’s,” Snow quietly mirrored.
Then, nearly defiantly, the footage in his documentary cuts to Snow in Egypt, Paris, and joyfully leaping from a aircraft along with his arms flung open to the sky.
“Seeing these elements, you assume, ‘Wow, that particular person has an amazing life,’” he stated. “And that’s precisely what I would like you to really feel. Regardless of what some would possibly name insurmountable challenges, I’m embracing life in a means many by no means get to do.”
The documentary’s energy lies in that juxtaposition: life-sustaining restrictive tubing and skydiving; overwhelming disappointment and Snow taking middle stage as a comic, fostering smiles and laughter on nationwide levels like BET and The Giggle Manufacturing facility.
From the primary time Charles met Snow, she witnessed his uncanny present of bringing pleasure to others.
“We have been seated aspect by aspect as audio system on a panel. He was cracking jokes below his breath the entire time,” she stated whereas laughing. “From that second on, we’ve been like household.”
With the premiere of “You Look High-quality,” Charles seems ahead to the world getting an up shut take a look at Snow’s journey, from being hooked to hospital intravenous strains to delivering punchlines on nationwide levels.
She vividly remembers how she felt throughout a prescreening of the movie.
“An enormous sense of pleasure came to visit me,” she recalled. “To bravely present among the ugly elements of what I, and the remainder of my group expertise, then flip round and present artistry, expertise, magnificence, and laughter solely frames later, it was revolutionary for me.”
‘Storytelling is an Act of Revolution’
On the Howard College Heart for Sickle Cell Illness, genetic counselor Barbara Harrison has spent her profession serving on the intersection of science and humanity, and has seen therapy, training, and engagement across the sickness shift through the years.
“The old-fashioned of thought was to deal with sickle cell clinically,” Harrison defined. “However we can not ignore the influence of environmental elements on well being and wellbeing.”
Harrison sees what the general public usually doesn’t: the isolation, id struggles, and the psychological toll of a lifetime spent combating a very unpredictable illness.
“Simply because individuals look superb on the surface,” Harrison cautioned, “that doesn’t imply they don’t seem to be combating a non-public warfare.”
Snow’s title is just not unintended. “You Look High-quality” is the phrase so many with persistent sicknesses hear, complementary and fully dismissive on the identical time.
For Charles, the facility of Snow’s message is each brave and deeply human.
“Storytelling is an act of revolution,” she acknowledged.“Bearing witness to our tales is an integral a part of the act of being human. The second that we lose that, we lose our humanity.”
Charles additionally emphasised that one of many greatest brokers of change for individuals of colour is storytelling.
“Throughout instances of slavery and the Civil Rights Motion, one of many greatest types of revolution was the humanities,” she stated. “Artwork, revolution, and alter, traditionally, for us, they go hand in hand.”
Although the premieres are set for Hollywood in the course of the Slamdance Movie Pageant, Snow’s imaginative and prescient stretches far past the February screenings in California. He hopes a worldwide streaming platform will carry the documentary, putting it within the palms of these battling persistent sickness, caregivers, and medical professionals worldwide.
“The dream,” he stated, “is to maintain myself with storytelling. To get up and receives a commission to determine the best way to carry my subsequent thought to life.”
For these residing with sickle cell illness, Snow hopes the movie strengthens their perception in themselves and the facility to pursue their very own distinctive goal.
“You might be a part of a fraternity by DNA,” he stated. “You finally have the facility to decide on how sickle cell is positioned in your life.”
This reporter has genotype SS, probably the most aggressive type of sickle cell illness. She lectures and advocates nationally for inclusion of psychological well being help and holistic and different medication as therapy for these with persistent sicknesses.
