San­dra L Blood

Af­ter a 17-year ab­sence, Tri­ni-Cana­di­an film­mak­er, song­writer, and cre­ative vi­sion­ary Gi­no McK­oy has re­turned to T&T with a mis­sion—to help trans­form the coun­try in­to the “Hol­ly­wood of the Caribbean.”

McK­oy, an ac­com­plished writer, di­rec­tor, pro­duc­er, and in­ter­na­tion­al record­ing artiste, ar­rived on Au­gust 2 seek­ing a pro­duc­tive, per­for­mance-dri­ven part­ner­ship with the T&T gov­ern­ment. His goal: to es­tab­lish a world-class film and cin­e­ma in­dus­try aligned with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

He has al­ready sub­mit­ted a three-part pro­pos­al to the gov­ern­ment and is meet­ing with min­is­ters, as well as giv­ing tele­vi­sion and ra­dio in­ter­views to out­line his plan.

McK­oy’s vis­it comes on the heels of glob­al ac­claim for his ground­break­ing sci-fi thriller Lu­mi­na and its chart-top­ping orig­i­nal sound­track, Every­thing To Me, which de­buted at #30 on the 2025 Bill­board charts and con­tin­ues to climb. Re­mark­ably, he is the on­ly in­de­pen­dent artiste cur­rent­ly chart­ing on Bill­board with a Hol­ly­wood fea­ture film si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly stream­ing on Ama­zon, YouTube TV, Google TV, and Tubi.

Writ­ten and di­rect­ed by McK­oy, Lu­mi­na was re­leased the­atri­cal­ly in 2024 and has been praised for its bold sto­ry­telling and cut­ting-edge vi­su­al ef­fects. Shot en­tire­ly in Mo­roc­co dur­ing the height of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the film cap­ti­vat­ed glob­al au­di­ences. Its genre-bend­ing sound­track—al­so pro­duced by McK­oy—has chart­ed across mul­ti­ple Bill­board cat­e­gories, ce­ment­ing his rep­u­ta­tion as a cre­ative pow­er­house.

In March, Forbes mag­a­zine pro­filed McK­oy, spot­light­ing his dual mas­tery of film and mu­sic, and his de­ter­mi­na­tion to re­shape op­por­tu­ni­ties for Caribbean cre­atives on the world stage.

“I’ve helped grow the film in­dus­tries in Mo­roc­co, Cana­da, and the US,” McK­oy said. “Now it’s time to re­turn to my na­tive land and help my peo­ple.”

The on­ly child of mu­si­cians and re­tired bank­ing of­fi­cials, Lyn­da and Hud­son McK­oy—founders of Goldove En­ter­tain­ment—Gi­no grew up sur­round­ed by mu­sic. Clas­si­cal­ly trained, he stud­ied po­lit­i­cal sci­ence and world re­li­gion, spe­cial­is­ing in Ju­daism and Chris­tian­i­ty. Ini­tial­ly mi­grat­ing to pur­sue mu­sic, he lat­er ex­pand­ed in­to film­mak­ing, blend­ing his mu­si­cal artistry in­to his screen projects.

Among his achieve­ments is cre­at­ing the largest in­te­ri­or film set ever built in Africa—a 50,000 sq ft sound­stage for Lu­mi­na. His vi­sion for T&T in­cludes the con­struc­tion of world-class stu­dios, mas­sive job cre­ation, and for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment.

McK­oy projects that the lo­cal in­dus­try could gen­er­ate 75,000 to 100,000 di­rect and in­di­rect jobs with­in four to five years, pro­vid­ed there is gov­ern­ment buy-in. He plans for Goldove En­ter­tain­ment to pro­duce a min­i­mum of four ma­jor mo­tion pic­tures in T&T over the next two years, with his first Trinidad-based project al­ready trend­ing in Hol­ly­wood as one of the most sig­nif­i­cant Black his­to­ry films slat­ed for next year—and a po­ten­tial Acad­e­my Award con­tender.

He al­so em­pha­sis­es the po­ten­tial for the in­dus­try to ab­sorb skilled grad­u­ates who cur­rent­ly leave school with­out clear ca­reer path­ways, as well as the long-term eco­nom­ic im­pact sim­i­lar to that seen in coun­tries with thriv­ing film sec­tors.

McK­oy’s com­pa­ny, Goldove En­ter­tain­ment, co-found­ed with his par­ents, has al­ready pro­duced three mu­sic videos, his short film Hy­per­sex­u­al, and his first screen­play LMI. Goldove’s brand, which stands for “God” and “peace” and is in­spired by McK­oy’s “gold­en voice,” is ded­i­cat­ed to “bring­ing emo­tions to life through film, mu­sic, and fash­ion.” The com­pa­ny’s fash­ion line is set to launch soon.

Dur­ing his T&T vis­it, McK­oy and his man­ag­er were as­sist­ed by Natasha Long and Dion Bou­caud. A sur­prise mo­ment came when one of his ra­dio in­ter­views was con­duct­ed by vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian Short Pants (Llewe­lyn McIn­tosh), a for­mer teacher of his fa­ther. He al­so ap­peared on CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew with Ryan Ba­choo.

McK­oy and his team are sched­uled to de­part in the third week of Au­gust, leav­ing be­hind a clear mes­sage: the time is right for T&T to seize its place on the glob­al cin­e­mat­ic stage.

For more in­for­ma­tion:

Gi­no McK­oy: www.goldove.com | www.an­favfx.com

Email: gi­no@goldove.com | Ph: +1 (323) 809-6997

Lyn­da McK­oy: Email: lyn­da@goldove.com | Ph: +1 (424) 368-1579