Sarah Mosses Together Films is handling world sales on the title.
DEADLINE:How did you conceive the idea for this film?
I wanted to say these specific things in an elevated way.
‘In Camera’Prettybird Films, Public Dreams
It took four or five years of figuring out how I could do that.
And what material inspired you?
We live in such a high performative time.
With this film I was thinking of the resistance of that.
This sounds quite abstract and academic, but these geometric abstractions slowly became the genesis of the film.
DEADLINE:How much of this is based upon your own experience as a young man in society today?
KHALID: I think there is a shared alienation today in society that I wanted to tap into.
How do you navigate spaces and systems that are not built for you?
Passivity is something that is often used as a coping mechanism as one learns to navigate spaces safely.
DEADLINE:Lets talk about Nabhaan Rizwan, who does an amazing job of playing Aden.
Tell me about how you cast him for the lead role and the process of working with him?
I just instinctively felt he was right.
We were just very, very collaborative.
As a director, my favorite thing about this media is the collaboration and working with actors.
We built Aden over a six-month period very forensically.
But what is interesting and we would both agree is that we still dont know him.
Theres almost like a white gaze that comes with that.
And thats difficult as an actor when youre stripped of language and the cameras are close to your face.
Hes an incredible artist and very clever and a real co-author of the character.
This was presumably very intentional.
KHALID: Yes definitely.
Essentially, if you strip it down, its about a person navigating late capitalism.
As an actor, youre kind of seen as a product and youre stripped of your agency.
Being an actor, you cant separate your labor from your body.
I learned that the camera is such a tool of colonialism.
Being a director who is Asian doesnt make me immune to reproducing whiteness.
Every frame is loaded with it.
But I didnt want to write and direct a film that was didactic in anyway.
Instead, I wanted to film an ambiguity that leaves the audience with questions and doesnt provoke.
These people are going on a journey, and it doesnt have to feel smoothed out or neat.
The most exciting thing for me about filmmaking is that relationship with an audience.
DEADLINE:He plays the role of a son who has died in therapy session for a mother.
How did you come up with this idea and use it as a tool to explore themes of loss?
So, it was all of these complicated things.
As an academic, I was dealing with a lot of young people who were suicidal.
DEADLINE:What was the big lesson you learned from getting this first feature off the ground?
But this is a super ambitious film for this kind of scale.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
