IN THE FLESH: THE JULIA DUCOURNAU INTERVIEW.

It was the film that became the cause célèbre at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, driven by a wave of glowing trade reviews and the passionate response from audience members, as they emerged ashen-faced from crowded screenings. Raw tells a contemporary tale of sibling rivalry and familial tradition, of a young woman (Garance Marillier) struggling to embrace a destiny forged in blood…literally. For writer/director Julia Ducournau, whose coming-of-age horror/drama earned her the Festival’s FIPRESCI 'Parallel Sections' Prize, it was a challenge to humanize her characters, even as they performed the most inhuman of acts. “Cannibals are usually the bad guys,” the French auteur told SCREEN-SPACE during her visit to Melbourne in November, where Raw earned Best Film honours at MonsterFest 2016…

SCREEN-SPACE: One of the great joys of my 2016 Cannes experience was watching Raw with a receptive, energised audience. There was a point – let’s call it the ‘finger scene’ – when we all realised the nature of the journey we’d undertaken…

JULIA: That is so good to hear, because that is so much about what I am aiming at in my film. You would know that, since you started watching horror movies behind your parents back, you do it with your friends or your sister or your cousin. You do it under a blanket or behind cushions on the couch, bonding with that other person over whatever is happening on the screen. It is a scary but also a joyous aspect of watching horror and I love working within a genre that inspires that sense of community, of complicity.

SCREEN-SPACE: What conventions of the cannibal genre did you want to embrace and explore and what tropes were you determined to avoid?

JULIA: I researched a lot of books, but I did not go back to the movies I had seen about cannibalism. I wanted to keep focussed on the ideas that had inspired my story and not over analyse the movies that had come before, so I was not thinking in terms of conventions. I love horror because it has its codes and it is interesting to subvert them, especially with body horror. The one thing I really wanted to adhere was a super realism. My main fear was that people would compare it to vampire or werewolf movies. I wanted people to really identify with this girl, and her needs and desires. I did not want to make it easy for the audience by putting a fantastic veil on it, by giving them some fantasy element that keeps them distant. I didn’t want anyone thinking, “Well, I can’t really identify with these girls because they don’t exist, so I am safe.” I want the audience to be vulnerable to Justine’s developing humanity and to draw comparisons to their own. If you find yourself identifying with a cannibal, you start questioning yourself as a person. The cannibals of such films as Cannibal Holocaust or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre exist in some perverted version of the world. In Raw, I wanted it to be the opposite. (Pictured, above; Garance Marillier as Justine, in Raw)

SCREEN-SPACE: The film is unique in its depiction of sisterhood, both within the narrative and with reference to the often-constrictive boundaries the horror genre can place upon female characters.

JULIA: I wanted to talk about the love they share. It was important that, at the end of their story, there is heartbreak. They have to be separated, not because they want to but because it is deemed that they have to. Their paths are forever intertwined yet completely irreconcilable. This dynamic of love/hate, of rivalry, without ever being able to explain why they change moods from one scene to another is the (essence of) sisterhood, of a bond that every girl understands. I didn’t want any of those boring scenes where sisters spell out their issues to each other. I was trying to create a relationship where you didn’t have to have these explanatory scenes, but instead just go straight to the core of the bond they share.

SCREEN-SPACE: The themes also embrace that dark heart at the core of even the most seemingly pleasant family environment.

JULIA: That’s right, especially in the light of how family politics have been portrayed since the dawn of humanity in all the myths we have created. Back to the days of the pharaohs, through Shakespeare and right up until today, the dark side of the family unit is portrayed as incestuous, cannibalistic, as a rivalry exposed. It is always portrayed in very violent ways. So we are prepared for the family horrors in my film, because we have read Greek tragedy and we have read the Bible. It works in all languages, especially cinematically. (Pictured, left; Marillier and Ella Rumpf, as Alexia, in Raw)

SCREEN-SPACE: In terms of your national cinema, your strong female leads fit well with the great films of the French Extreme movement, like Martyrs and Haute Tension.

JULIA: There is no French Extreme movement. What are we talking about exactly? There are, maybe, seven films that have been made over the course of 20 years. Do you call that a ‘New Wave’, a ‘Movement’?

SCREEN-SPACE: Those films, and films like Inside and Frontieres, reflect a very specific point in French genre cinema when your peers explored undeniably extreme depictions of horror…

JULIA: Those films are totally unrelated works, made by directors who barely know each, over the course of 20 years. For me, a ‘New Wave’ is when a small group of directors talk between themselves, establish a dogma that dictates the direction their collective works will take, like we had in France in the 60s. I am kind of sick of talking about this French Extreme movement that does not exist. I have talked about it with Alexandre Aja, who totally agrees with me. His movie that you mentioned, Haute tension, came out in the 90s! It is so old (Ed: Haute tension was released in France in June, 2003). How can you relate a movie that is 25 years old to what I am doing today? So much has changed. The context in which they are made has changed. I am sick of being put in the same bag just because we are French and we make genre movies.

SCREEN-SPACE: I wasn’t trying to imply that, but I would say that a direct line could be drawn between those films and the portrayal of violence that your film employs. There is a lineage, don’t you agree…?

JULIA: No, I don’t, not at all. And it is not that I don’t like these movies, some of them I like very much. But I am waiting for the writer or the journalist who writes the powerful essay that convinces me that any of what you say is true. You should do it!

(Pictured, above: l-r, Rabah Nait Oufella, Ella Rumpf, Ducournau, Marillier and Joana Preiss, Cannes 2016) 

SCREEN-SPACE: Maybe. Let’s talk specifically about your attitude to and use of gore.

JULIA: Well, I hate gratuitous violence. I always feel used, then I feel annoyed, then I am bored (laughs). If a movie starts with extreme violence, and ends exactly the same way, there has been no evolution. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has very intense action but very little blood, at least before you meet the family. That film achieves a remarkable sense of balance, which is important for me. Any violence that I portray is really the violence that is internal for my characters. Let me say that my problem is not that we are desensitized to violence, but more that violence is completely taken for granted. That is a terrible shame. One of the main reasons we make horror movies is so that we can explore and express our relationship with violence in the most channelled, precise and intelligent way we can. The opportunity to express one’s sense of violence in this way is not given to everyone, so it is more often repressed. Horror movies exist to help those people, and if you use them for no reason at all you are denying the viewer this act of catharsis. Horror movies have always been the true underground cinema, because we talk about what is repressed.

SCREEN-SPACE: You show an unflinching dedication to that principle in Raw…

JULIA: In my own small way, I was determined to show things that must be shown. And when I show it, it will be revealed in the most confrontational, full-frontal way possible, in a manner that stops you from looking away. Just like Cronenberg does in The Fly; very little camera movements, still shots, frontal, centre-of-frame, so that you cannot avert your gaze. This kind of cinema demands that you confront your own mortality. Then your film starts to work in the crevices between scenes, where the moments you don’t show add to the impact of what you eventually do show.

READ The SCREEN-SPACE review of Raw here.

PREVIEW: MONSTER FEST 2016

There was once a time when dabbling in the horror genre or grabbing a paycheck for some tawdry ‘B-thriller’ suggested an actor’s status was on the slide. One only need skim the star power on offer at Monster Fest 2016 to know that the richest characters and most compelling narratives in contemporary film exist amongst international cult cinema’s weird and wonderfully eclectic palette.

Newly appointed festival director Kier-La Janisse has adhered to a half-decade of high standards and festival traditions, topping and tailing the fifth edition of the four-day event with two of the year’s hottest horror titles. Opening night honours have been bestowed upon Julia Ducournau’s Raw (read the SCREEN-SPACE review here), the teen-cannibal shocker that has left a trail of rattled audiences since scoring the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes in May; closing out the programme will be Jim Hosking’s The Greasy Strangler, a bona-fide cult sensation that The New York Times noted, “overflows with extravagant flatulence, frenzied gore and preposterous copulation.”

Audiences drawn to name talent will seek out the frenzied gunplay of Free Fire, a collaboration between director Ben Wheatley, producer Martin Scorsese and the dream cast of Oscar winner Brie Larsen (pictured, top), Cillian Murphy, Armie Hammer and Australia’s own Noah Taylor (also fronting Nick Jongerius’ backpacker slasher pic The Windmill Massacre); Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch in The Autopsy of Jane Doe, the gory mortuary-set English language debut of Troll Hunter director André Øvredal; and, Patrick Wilson, Jim Belushi, Ian McShane and an unhinged John Leguizamo in Spanish auteur Gonzalo López-Gallego’s bloody neo-western-noir, The Hollow Point (pictured, right).

Also certain to sell tickets are director Paul Schrader’s insanely anarchic Dog Eat Dog, a blackly comic crime thriller that stars Willem Dafoe and Nicholas Cage; Virginia Madsen and Patrick Warburton in Chris Peckover’s Yuletide home-invasion thriller, Safe Neighbourhood; a masterfully maniacal lead turn by Natasha Lyonne, opposite an against-type Chloe Sevigny as her trailer–trash bestie, in Danny Perez’s paranoid fever-dream, Antibirth (trailer, above); and good ol’ boy icon Burt Reynolds in documentarian Jesse Moss’ The Bandit, an adoring insider’s take on the late director Hal Needham and his 1977 blockbuster, Smokey and The Bandit.

The industry respect afforded Melbourne’s premiere genre showcase has meant the presence of international guests is all but assured. In 2016, the big draw is Ted Kotcheff, one of Hollywood’s most revered and respected directors. In addition to an ‘In Conversation’ event with director and genre expert Mark Hartley, Kotcheff will present rare screenings of some of his most enduring works, including the Australian classic Wake in Fright (1971); the iconic Sylvester Stallone thriller, First Blood (1982; pictured, right, Stallone and Kotcheff on-set); the cult favourite, Weekend at Bernie’s (1989); and, a digitally-restored print of his little-seen ‘religious cult’ drama, Split Image (1982), featuring Peter Fonda, Michael O’Keefe and Karen Allen.

In addition to Raw director Julia Ducournau and the stars of The Greasy Strangler, Michael St Michaels and Sky Elobar, guest attendees include director Neil Edwards, fronting for the Australian debut of his documentary Sympathy for The Devil: The True Story of The Process Church of The Final Judgement; Lao filmmaker Mattie Do, director of Dearest Sister, and the only woman to date to helm a feature film in her homeland; director Matthew Holmes and key cast members from the Australian bushranger saga, The Legend of Ben Hall (trailer, below); veteran producer Anthony I. Ginnane (Turkey Shoot, 1982; Thirst, 1979; Harlequin, 1980), who will front the panel, ‘Australia After Dark: Tales from The Golden Age of Ozploitation’; Jai Love, the young director of Dead Hands Dig Deep, a moving profile of 90s alt-music great, Kettle Cadaver frontman Edwin Borsheim; and Evrim Ersoy, festival programmer of the Texan genre event, Fantastic Fest.

Alongside the screening schedule, the sidebar Monster Academy will present a series of panels and Q&As, several of which offer free admission. In addition to the Ted Kotcheff talk, events will include a panel of women directors and festival programmers discussing ‘Genre Matters: Women Genre Filmmakers’; exploring the ins-&-outs of film festival strategizing, curating and presenting in Film Festival 101; and, a retrospective look at genre on the small-screen, including rare screenings of the Australian anthology series The Evil Touch, a witchcraft-themed episode of 70s cop drama, Homicide, the British ‘real life’ haunted house telemovie Ghost Watch, and a legitimate appraisal of the role of the supernatural in soap operas, called ‘Diedre Hall is The Devil’.

Monster Pictures boss Neil Foley will himself front one of the highlights of the week when filmmaker Geoffrey Wright leads an evening of 25^th anniversary recollections of his controversial classic Romper Stomper, in which a young Foley had a small role as a skinhead neo-Nazi.

Monster Fest runs November 24-27 at the Lido Cinema in Hawthorn; Monster Academy runs at several venues from November 23-24. All session and ticketing information at the official website.

THE SHELTER: THE MICHAEL PARE INTERVIEW

Michael Paré is a rare talent, embodying the phrase ‘a great character actor in a leading man’s body’. His iconic roles – Tom Cody in Streets of Fire; Eddie in Eddie and The Cruisers; David in The Philadelphia Experiment – are recalled with reverential glee by a generation of moviegoers. Since those heady days, the Brooklyn native has worked ceaselessly, alongside such eclectic filmmaking talents as Roland Emmerich (Moon 44), Eric Red (Bad Moon; 100 Feet), John Carpenter (Village of The Damned), Uwe Boll (BloodRayne; Seed) and Sofia Coppola (The Virgin Suicides). His latest is The Shelter, writer/director John Fallon’s dramatic psychological-thriller. Following the film’s recent screening at A Night of Horror Film Festival (ANOH) in Sydney, organisers determined that the time was right to honour Michael Paré for his contribution to cinema; he became the inaugural recipient of the event’s Career Achievement Award.

In the wake of the honour, Paré spoke with SCREEN-SPACE editor (and ANOH Jury President) Simon Foster from his LA home about his latest film, the actors who still inspire him and the time he spent Down Under…

Before we focus in on The Shelter, I want to ask you about Undercover, an Australian film you made what must feel like a hundred years ago. How did you end up in director David Steven’s comedy about women’s underwear?

(Laughs) Well, David was in LA casting and I got sent the script, right after I’d done Eddie and The Cruisers. I thought, ‘Wow, a period piece,’ but one that   wasn’t rock’n’roll and wasn’t action and seemed like a lot fun. I met David but I was a day late for the audition, he was getting ready to leave to fly home. And he gave me the job. It was my first job outside of the US. I needed to get a passport to make this film on the other side of the planet. I loved the experience; it was great time. I wish I could get back to Australia to work again. (Pictured, right; Paré with co-star Genevieve Picot in 1983's Undercover)

The Career Achievement honour at A Night of Horror was inspired by your performance in The Shelter. The complexity of your performance reflects a dedication to the craft nurtured over time. It is among your best work…

Thanks a lot, it was a great pleasure. It was a thing of love, not something that anyone thought was going to be very commercial. But it is a very dramatic story, great cinematography and a very impassioned crew and cast. It was a great experience.

Your character, Thomas, goes through a vast arc - guilt, grief, corrosive memories, the quest for redemption. Tell me about your impressions of the character when you first read John’s script…

The pain and suffering that a person can bring on themselves, the cost of not being aware of the impact of your actions on others; that misery and suffering and despair and guilt and remorse. These are incredibly powerful and painful emotions to experience. And they were brought on Thomas by his own actions, his own weakness. Not to pontificate, but a lot of pain and suffering is brought on by one’s own behaviour and it’s very sad. Nobody has to punish you, (yet) you often do it to yourself. It is an amazing thing to see. It is an interesting thing for me to explore, because I play a lot of heroes, cop stuff and detective stuff. But this was a small movie, filled with humanity.

How close did your interpretation of Thomas mesh with John’s vision?

The facts were all in the script. How they were going to manifest through me, the actor, hadn’t been worked out, of course. But John had seen a lot of my work and we were kind of buddies. He was there when we shot Bad Moon; he was with us in Hungary when we shot 100 Feet. Our mutual friend, Eric Red, and John and I have spent a lot of time together. So just talking with him about this subject matter, John could tell that I understood what he was going for. (Pictured, right: producer Donny Broussard, director John Fallon with Paré on the set of The Shelter)

I know your acting heroes are Brando and Dean; am I right in observing there is some of their dedication to character in your performance?

I didn’t try to imitate any other actor but I admired their performances so much and that they gave up so much of their souls to be photographed. So when you see such a powerful guy like Marlon Brando collapse in front of the apartment in A Streetcar Named Desire because he is so lonely and desperate and hungry for Stella, to see this brute is also such a baby. To find this strong, physical guy is so emotionally handicapped (means) a strong similarity between Stanley and Thomas exists. And in Rebel Without a Cause, Dean has that great scene when he’s watching his parents fight and he has that great line, “You’re tearing me apart,” because he cant figure out what is right or wrong anymore. Yeah, that’s inspiring. That’s Jimmy Dean, the coolest man in the world at the time and he’s willing to show this incredible vulnerability. So, yes, inspiration but not imitation.

Whether it’s the big studio pictures like The Lincoln Lawyer or the Uwe Boll stuff or smaller, prestige pics like The Shelter, 121 IMDb credits suggests an incredible work ethic. How would you sum up your philosophy of your craft and the industry you’ve been part of for so long?

It doesn’t matter what size the budget is, my job as an actor is the same. I have to do my preparation, be on time, hit my marks and create a performance. The tape on the floor isn’t that expensive (laughs). Whether it’s a $50,000 camera or some little handheld thing, my job’s the same. Ask any thespian; when they step on stage in some little town in the middle of nowhere, it is the same as stepping on a stage anywhere. The audiences might be big or small, the projects are never the same, but the job is always the same.

GRANDMA'S BOY: THE M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN INTERVIEW

Few films in recent memory have buzzed with such cinematic brio as The Visit, the terrifyingly entertaining story of teenage documentarian Rebecca (Olivia DeJonge), her kid brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) and the unnerving week they spend with their off-kilter grandparents (Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie). It is the latest vision from M. Night Shyamalan, the auteur whose blockbusters The Sixth Sense (1999), Unbreakable (2000), Signs (2002) and The Village (2004) saw a Newsweek cover label him "The Next Spielberg". Yet The Visit represents a bold departure for the 45 year-old; his chilling, blackly funny script is brought to life using first-person perspectives and handheld camerawork. It exists in that ‘found-footage’ realm, but both deconstructs and revitalises the genre. The morning after a crowd-pleasing preview in Sydney’s cinema district, M. Night Shyamalan sat with SCREEN-SPACE to discuss his latest work…

There is a clarity, a leanness, about the storytelling in The Visit. I sensed that you were having a lot of fun making this film…

I’m so close to it still, but it seems like the most fun I’ve had making a film. I think it tops the last ‘most fun’ experience I’ve had, which was Signs. I think in both films you can sense a kind of buoyancy that was coming from me, like I was goofing around and having a good time playing with the movie. I think good energy comes from that.

After more than a decade of big studio projects, were there habits you had to unlearn or techniques you had to reassess when shooting the smaller scale, ‘first-person’ perspective used in The Visit?

I’m naturally a more intimate filmmaker. I think and view more in those terms. This idea of limitations and looking through one person’s perspective is naturally how I see things. Even when I’m shooting some big scene, with action and extras and all that stuff, I have to fight the instinct to see it as an intimate thing, to film it as one soldier’s perspective and examining it from the point of what they’re feeling. A story like this fits well for me, fits what I like to call the filmmaker's ‘accent.’ Some filmmakers are great journeyman directors. You hire them and they adapt and can be whatever you need them to be, but they don’t have a strong accent with the way they tell the story. In that way, The Visit is a really good match for me. I know I wrote it but I did that to match the story to my accent. I tend to come from a very optimistic place but do enjoy telling very dark stories, and my protagonists match that. (Pictured, above; Peter McRobbie as Pop-pop in The Visit)

In much of your work, your narratives centre on children in both lead roles (Wide Awake; The Sixth Sense; The Last Airbender; After Earth) and strong support parts (Signs). Why does childhood hold such a fascination for you?

It speaks to that period of time when we are growing up, let’s say between 10 and 15, that I find extraordinary but also sad and tragic. That’s when we stop believing, when we are throwing away childish beliefs and aspects of our imagination that help us be so present as children, and we start to believe instead in the real world. Those are sad moments. I spend a lot of time thinking about characters that are put in an extraordinary situation and then try to convince the adults, “Hey, something’s going on here.” And they are able to do this because they can still believe a little bit. I am anchored in that period because a lot of my movies are about faith and belief.

The casting of these two Australian actors, Ed Oxenbould and Olivia DeJonge, continues an incredible winning streak in your unearthing of child actors…

Casting is so critical and it is a very hard skill set to learn. You have to see something in them that you are going to have to draw out. That may be something that they may not have necessarily given you in the auditions, but you have to see it in them somewhere. It is their anchor; they are pivoting their emotions off this anchor, and you have to be able to say, “Ok, that’s it.” That’s hard to do, especially when casting early on and the material is still forming. I was very lucky with Ed and Olivia. I always look for a handful of traits when casting kids. I need them to be super smart, because we are going analyse the craft of acting in such a deep way I have to be able to talk to them about it as if they were adults. Secondly, they have to be good people, because that is what I want to bring out of the characters. And the third thing, perhaps the most important thing, is their family situation. Their parents need to be people who I can talk to and I can respect, because it is a team game when working with a child actor; I’ll push them and push them and I’ll eventually need to go through the parents to get to them. (Pictured, above; Shyamalan, left, directing Ed Oxenbould on the set of The Visit).

When directors place a camera in their character's hands, it is an opportunity to comment on the nature of their craft. What does Becca’s attitude to film reveal about you?

You know, both the kids represent two sides of me. Becca is kind of in awe of the art of filmmaking and an aspiring artist, even when it tips over into pretension or into a dogma about it, a pompousness that is stiff and unwavering. I feel all those things about filmmaking. Then there is the other side, that being ‘the entertainer’ and that’s Ed. Sometimes I just want to be a mischievious kid, capturing something shocking on film.

The core emotional arc in The Visit is about a family’s generational divide. How did this form?

Every story I write, I glimpse scenes and dialogue that ultimately pose the question, “What is the film about?” There’s a unifying thematic theory underneath it all, so that every scene represents a goal, one same thing. The Visit is about forgiveness. What happens when we do forgive, or when we don’t forgive. There’s a lot of pain in all the backstories of all the characters; the mum and her parents, or the kids and their dad. They are being juxtaposed throughout the film. When we don’t forgive, we eventually have to consider the years that are lost, the love that lost, the opportunities that are lost. That is the lesson that Becca comes to learn. (Pictured, above; Olivia DeJonge as Rebecca, left, and Deanna Dunagan as Nana in The Visit).

Prior to the screening last night, you made some very passionate points about the value of seeing films like The Visit as a shared, communal experience…

It is everything to me, that’s why I do what I do. Whenever someone tries to suggest that we can release across all these platforms, I just say, “No!” When I saw Raiders of The Lost Ark, I remember thinking, “Wow, this is it.” I saw it in an old theatre, something like 1500 seats, a sold-out session; I couldn’t sit with my friends. The experience I had bordered upon religious (laughs). And I use that word because it was like a group hysteria was happening. I was transported; this enormous crowd was transported. Now would I want to watch Raiders… for the first time, alone on my couch in my den? That’s sad! I would have been denied that shared experience. It is one of my great memories, seeing those great movies in great movie theatres. With The Visit, I was determined to make every gasp, every laugh, a crucial part of that shared experience. It is a film that is really about the responsibilities we, the filmmakers, take on when we choose to tell our stories to a group of strangers.

The Visit opens in US theatres on September 11; the film opens in Australia on September 24. Check local listings for other territories. 

DIRECTOR SUMMONS MIDDLE EASTERN DEMON FOR U.S. DEBUT

As a boy, Ajmal Zaheer Ahmad would sit spellbound as his elders retold the story of the Jinn. Mythological creatures that have walked amongst the living since the dawn of time, they have all but disappeared, unseen to the shallow gaze of modern man. Ahmad’s fascination with the legend has led to his debut feature Jinn, in which a centuries-old curse resurfaces to terrorise the present-day descendant of an ill-fated clan. For the young auteur, bringing to life the folklore of his Middle Eastern ancestry for a modern audience proved an enormous yet rewarding challenge…

“There has not been one particular project, book or film, that has attempted to modernize the concept,” Ahmad (pictured, above) told SCREEN-SPACE from his US base. Inherent to the spiritual teachings of Arabic and Asian cultures, the legend of the Jinn speaks of supernatural entities, conjured from ‘smokeless fire’, and are referenced throughout the Islamic holy text, the Quran; thought to be the basis for the legend of the ‘Genie’, they are one of the three creations of God, alongside man (made of clay) and angels (made of light). Says Ahmad, who also wrote and edited his film, “We wanted to use ‘Jinn’ the movie to not only bring the concept to the western world but to also create a mythology that had some rules to it.”  

For Ahmad and his production team at Exxodus Pictures, crafting a modern action thriller from a centuries-old text brought with it great responsibility. “Basically, (the narrative) stayed true to the beliefs that are common around the world, and then (we) filled in the story gaps so it became more fully-realised,” he says. The central figure is Shawn (Dominic Rains), a strapping hero whose life with his beautiful wife Jasmine (Serinda Swain) becomes the focus of a vengeful demonic force. He teams with wizened cleric Father Westhoff (William Atherton, of Ghostbusters fame) and mysterious warrior-type, Gabriel (fan favourite Ray Park, pictured, right; from X-Men, G.I. Joe and Episode 1: The Phantom Menace) to see off the powerful foe. (“Ray was a big win for us,” admits the director.)

Ajmal Zaheer Ahmad cites as his filmmaking influences the great modern directors whose works combine vivid imagery and assured technique with strong, soulful characters and storytelling. “The short list, of course, is made up of Spielberg, Cameron, Ridley Scott, Lucas,” he says. “These directors were able to create new worlds for people to visit and I want to do the same thing. Jinn was a exercise in that (style of) direction.” Raised in the once thriving American industrial hub of Detroit, Ahmad was determined to shoot his first production on the streets from which he drew much inspiration over time. “Detroit and the state of Michigan were integral to the creation of Jinn and rolled out the red carpet wherever and whenever we needed them to” he states. “We are all proud to be from here and are even prouder to have been given the chance to give something back.”

Raised in strict adherence to the Islamic faith, Ahmad was aware that a film steeped in Muslim iconography and originating from a culture misunderstood by many of his fellow Americans may prove to be a tough sell. But his faith in his family’s adopted homeland was unwavering. “I'm a firm believer that America is, in general, a great place to live, made up of mostly good people with open minds. If that weren't true, I don't think my father would have chosen to come here and settle with his family,” he says. “I know that prejudice still lurks in dark corners, (but) I grew up seeing a very fair America.” As his script began to take shape, Ahmad became determined to tell his unique, original genre story in a strong voice, confident that fans would respond. “Rather than concentrate on who wouldn't like the concept of Jinn based upon those prejudices, I think I was hoping that there would be more people that were interested in learning about a new idea and making it their own,” he says. “After all, that is what the U.S. was founded on. And I think that ended up being true.” (Pictured, left; the director, on-set)

Supporting that notion is the fan base that Jinn has generated since its release. Following a limited US theatrical run, the film has played to enthusiastic international audiences, both in densely populated Muslim communities and with broader western filmgoers. “We've been very lucky in that our fan base has grown substantially around the world,” says Ahmad, citing the social media following and VOD traffic numbers as evidence. “There have been thousands asking for a sequel and we feel that Jinn could easily support more movies. With a little luck, I'm sure we'll be back in production on another Jinn concept soon.”

Jinn will be released in Australia across all platforms on April 16 via Third Millennium Entertainment.