We often forget that some of the best films ever made didn’t come with colossal budgets and outrageous VFX, their brilliance established through a great story and very relatable characters. British-Pakistani filmmaker Moin Hussain’s debut feature, which premiered in Venice before being poised to screen at the upcoming London Film Festival, is just one of those films.
When I sat down with Moin Hussain, on an overcast morning in Venice just as I was about to leave the Lido, the puzzle that his film had created inside my head, and heart, suddenly acquired its missing piece. Hussain is a bit like his leading character Adam, a man with a foot in each of his wonderful cultures yet treading gently in both.
In Sky Peals, Hussain’s impressive debut feature, which screened as part of Venice’s Critics’ Week lineup, Adam (played by the recognizable Faraz Ayub) is a man who tries his best to fly under the radar. He works nightshifts at a motorway service station, living a kind of small and lonely life, when he hears that his estranged father has passed away. Thus he begins a voyage of discovery which leads him to the idea that perhaps he belongs to another world.
“Alien” is a word we use to describe both “the Other” and beings from another universe so I can’t help but find within Hussain’s impressive first work a sort of metaphor for his own existence. As someone who grew up in a culture which wasn’t my own, I completely identify with the concept of non-belonging, and in Adam’s case the idea is taken to the extreme. But without cinematic fireworks and fanfares, just short visual/sound bytes, or “peals”. In fact, what makes Sky Peals so brilliant is that most of the action is what goes on between the lines, not on the big screen.
Moin Hussain photographed by © Lisa Stonehouse
I tell Hussain about the parallels I find between these two types of aliens and whether he was aware of that in his creative process. “Personally, I’m half Pakistani and half British,” he concedes, although “I’ve never been to Pakistan, I don’t speak the language so it was this part of myself I’m aware of but I don’t really have much access to or understanding of. It was kind of this feeling of being or feeling alienated or feeling that part of myself was alien to me, I guess, which was part of the jumping off for the character. “
Hussain was also inspired by Steven Spielberg, as he explained in his press kit interview. “Years ago I was watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the thing that really struck me about the film was that how it’s actually story about running away from your life and responsibilities,” he writes, continuing that “the Richard Dreyfuss character leaves his family to be with the aliens and because the story is from his perspective it’s presented to us as a hero’s journey instead of an abandonment. I thought that was really interesting and it left me thinking about the family and children he leaves behind and wondering what had happened to them. Thinking about my own family and how absences were dealt with and sometimes mythologised, it felt like an interesting starting point to me.”
When I question Hussain about the spark for coming up with this story, he answers “it’s a lot of things, there is a lot of personal in there but also a lot that isn’t.” He elaborates, “I’ve always wanted to make a sci-fi film that was set in a service station, they always felt to me a bit like a space ship. You’ve got all this darkness around you and you’re in this space out on your own — it’s manmade, it’s bright, it’s isolated so I’ve always had this idea for a film but I didn’t have a story.” The father and son connection came instead from his own work, he says. “I made a short film named NAPTHA, which is the last short film I made that was about a father and a son and ideas of isolation, identity, immigration and heritage. It was ideas and thoughts that were going on with me in my life at that point. And it was through that story and the things I was exploring in that story that I felt this is the character and world — this fits.”
I ask Hussain if he’s ever studied philosophy, as many of the themes in his film have a deep philosophical foundation, I feel. “I didn’t but that’s a nice compliment — it’s always something I wanted to study,” he gushes.
What he did study was film and photography at the University of Leeds. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be. A DoP or editor and I thought, director — he stands at the front and takes the credit and I don’t want to do that,” Hussain confesses, “but it was through the process that I realized, oh [as a director] you get to have your toe in every little bit of the process. It took me quite a long time to make a film but once I did I enjoyed it and kept doing it.”
Big on ideas and definitely beautifully shot by DoP Nick Cooke and perfectly edited by Nse Asquo, as a first feature I imagine Sky Peals also must have been filmed on a relatively small budget. I tell Hussain that and he quickly answers “it was limited but to me, it’s the biggest budget I’ve ever had, so it feels alright!” And he also continued by pointing out “there are things you wish you had more money to spend on, but what’s the phrase, limitation being a source of creativity… And it was always quite a contained film.” He ponders for a moment and then adds “I think it was the right amount for the story,” which I wholeheartedly agree with. With the help of Elena Muntoni’s production design and Sophie O’Neill providing costumes, plus the crew “having to create the service station of my dreams,” as Hussain calls it, Sky Peals did more than alright on the budget it worked with. And just like you should never ask a woman her age, or her weight, I would never ask a filmmaker what that budget was.
I ask Hussain about his leading man, Faraz Ayub, who looks familiar to UK audiences thanks to his regular role on Channel 4’s Screw and his turn in the film What’s Love Got to Do with It? “He is in every frame,” Hussain admits. “Faraz was the first person and really the only person I saw who I believed was the character,” he explains, “Adam is a really internal character and he didn’t have much to play with — I felt he was the person who could tell me what I needed to know without doing too much.” Hussain also concedes that while Ayub isn’t that guy in real life, they all believed him from the get-go, since he’s an “excellent actor.”
Finally, I want to know about premiering the film on the Lido, most filmmakers’ dream. “Venice, it’s very exciting but it feels a relief to be able to be somewhere to show the film to people,” Hussain answers, down to earth, adding “and to be able to forget about.” Then he catches himself and completes that thought, “I know, this is when people start to talk about it… But to me, it’s about putting it in a different part of my brain.”
Sky Peals plays next the BFI London Film Festival, which runs from October 4th to the 14th, 2023.
Images courtesy of Bankside Films, which are handling the film’s international sales.