OAKLAND — Justin Tipping heard the word “no” a lot while trying to drum up interest in “Kicks,” his feature-length debut shot entirely in Oakland and Richmond.

“It was incredibly hard to get made,” said the El Cerrito-born director, seated on a bench overlooking one of the city’s Oakland’s iconic gems, Lake Merritt.

The semi-autobiographical drama, which is garnering glowing reviews for its filmmaker, overcame naysayers and opens Sept. 9.

“Kicks” is told from the perspective of Brandon, a Richmond teen who goes after the grill-mouthed thug who robbed him of his beloved Air Jordans. Tipping and co-screenwriter Joshua Beirne-Golden based “Kicks” on a real-life incident, when the director was 16 and a group of guys jumped him over his Nikes while he was on his way to an Emeryville movie theater.

While Hollywood insiders were effusive about the screenplay — “It’s crazy the amount of people who said ‘we love the script, it’s so great, what else do you have to write?'” — Tipping knew getting “Kicks” made was going to be tough.

“I had an R-rated coming-of-age story starring all unknowns and all people of color,” the 31-year-old filmmaker explains. “The one way to guarantee money back is celebrity, and so essentially it took a year-plus to get about 20 independent financing sources together.”

Tipping held true to his artistic vision and quickly learned how to cut budgetary corners without making it show. Case in point: a challenging sideshow sequence that had to be shot in only two days and that required him to make a small band of extras look like an enormous crowd.

Tipping’s topical drama addresses such themes as shoe culture and the misguided views of masculinity. It’s also a true-blue East Bay production, from the locations to the numerous hip/hop and rap artists featured on the soundtrack.

While there was talk about filming it elsewhere due to tax incentives, Tipping — and the East Bay — prevailed. “Kicks” was shot about 50/50 in Richmond and Oakland and Tipping was committed to accurately depicting the area and people living here.

The only other recent high-profile film to achieve that was Ryan Coogler’s 2013 drama “Fruitvale Station,” says “Kicks” actor and Oakland native Mahershala Ali.

Ali, the seemingly ubiquitous star (“House of Cards,” “Hunger Games” and the lead in the Netflix’s upcoming “Luke Cage” series) portrays the caring but complicated ex-con Uncle Marlon.

Ali praises Tipping’s commitment to avoiding stereotypes and his ability to express nuance. He also appreciates seeing his hometown on the big screen, and notes that East Bay residents love their community.

“There’s a certain pride here and connectedness to the geography, to the locale, that is not the same in other places,” he said.” Everyone in L.A. is from somewhere else so it feels a bit transitional. I think when people leave the Bay Area, they take it with them. When they stay here, they hold onto it tight.”

They also step up to help. Friends and community members proved essential in making sure “Kicks” became a reality, Tipping says, and the many thanks in the end credits attest to that.

“Kicks” received its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival this year, and while it didn’t win the U.S. narrative competition, it impressed critics. So did Tipping’s 2011 short, “Nani,” an award-winner that delved into the relationship between a young graffiti tagger and an elderly woman in a care facility.

The El Cerrito High School graduate majored in film and media studies at UC-Santa Barbara and received an MFA in directing from the American Film Institute Conservatory. He finds himself drawn to the cinematic stylings of Italian neorealists filmmakers, among others.

In part, “Kicks” is a modern reinterpretation of director Vittorio de Sica’s 1948 classic, “The Bicycle Thief,” in which a poor Italian father’s bike gets stolen and he becomes obsessed about getting it back.

Tipping finds great appeal in telling stories that give voice to the disenfranchised.

“I think consciously or not I tend to gravitate toward those types of stories,” he says. “I’d love to be that voice.”

If he gets bigger projects, he hopes to “Trojan Horse ideas into audiences,” much in the same manner as “Nightcrawlers” and “District 9,” which used stories to subltey explore the issues of media sensationalism and racism.

Key to his vision is avoiding stereotypes and expressing complexity of characters and situations.

“If you start to shoot it to show a world as depressing, you’re almost exploitative of it. You’re exoticizing the idea of what it means to come from an impoverished neighborhood.”

That goal was essential while shooting “Kicks.”

“It was always important to make a really beautiful film.”