Hailed by Mark Kermode as the best film of 2016, Babak Anvari’s psychological horror movie Under the Shadow has been released in a new limited edition by Second Sight Films. To mark the occasion, Anvari chatted from his home in New York with Paul Simpson about the challenges of putting together a movie that’s entirely in Farsi, and set during one of the most brutal conflicts of modern times…

I have to say I regret not having seen Under the Shadow till now. I knew of it but I hadn’t seen it.

I’m glad you watched it, thanks/

It’s put chills up my arms even though I was sitting in a nicely warm centrally heated house.

(laughs) That’s a great success, thank you.

What was the biggest challenge for you in realising the vision you had when you scripted it?

There were many challenges; filmmaking is challenging. Every day is a challenge but I think that getting it off the ground was a challenge because I was very adamant to make it in Farsi because it’s set in Tehran. I met a dozen producers when I wrote the script and a lot of them said no because of the language. They were like “it’s too risky” and so I was really lucky to find the producers of the film, which at that point were Wigwam Films. They took that risk and we set out to make it.

It was made with a very low budget, so that was another challenge. We had only 21 days to shoot it and [we were filming] in Jordan which I’d never been to.

A lot of my friends were actually telling me maybe I shouldn’t think of it as my first feature, I should leave it on the shelf and visit it later, but I was so adamant and passionate to get it made that I didn’t give up.

What fired that passion? Was it the nature of the story, the characters?

Well, it’s a very personal film in many ways. I mean obviously it’s not autobiographical.

(laughs) I’d hope not!

It’s a horror film. I’m not possessed by djinn but basically it stems from something very personal. I was born in Iran during the Iran/Iraq war and by the time it ended I was more or less the same age as the child in the film.

The major driving factor was that it was coming from a very personal place, inspired by the stories that I heard growing up from family, relatives, family friends and then just taking those stories and adding the genre element to it

I always wanted the film to start off almost like a social drama and then bit by bit shift into a tale of horror.

That was one of the things I noticed: you started off with a house full of people, and by the end it’s down to just the two of them, which is almost a reversal of a lot of the tropes in the genre.

Yes. That isolation and loneliness was really key for me because being that isolated during the time of war is very very scary and I really wanted to capture that feeling of isolation and loneliness

The title obviously has got multiple meanings with the shadow of war and the shadow of the djinn or whatever it is. By the end of the film as an audience we definitely feel that there is something there but as with things like The Innocents or the original Henry James story The Turn of the Screw, you’re not actually sure what it is. As far as you were concerned when you were making it and writing it, was there a possession? Was there a djinn there? Or was it in her mind?

I’m going to turn the tables on you and say one of the major influences for this film was actually Jack Clayton’s The Innocents and Henry James’s novel. I tried to walk that line very carefully taking inspiration from Henry James and the film adaptation. I tried to do a similar thing so I’m not going to say whether it was one thing or another; that’s down to the audience to interpret it the way they want.

I’m just wondering for you, having now lived through that story both in the writing and in seeing it play out, did that alter the way that you thought about it?

Well, it’s a very interesting thing. I believe in supernatural but I don’t know how much of that is [real] I believe that there is something beyond our understanding as human beings. But also, I don’t know how much of that [comes from] believing in that. I think these stories and that stuff becomes real when you believe in it. I guess it’s like a double edge. I put myself in Shideh’s shoes, the main character: if I were her I probably would start thinking that there’s a real haunting or possession going on and I need to do something about it.

That was another interesting thing with the arc of that character. Narges Rashidi who plays the character wonderfully and I were trying to start her off as someone who completely resists the idea but by the time she’s left on her own with this sick child in the middle of all those external pressures, she starts to believe in it bit by bit herself. That was interesting for us to explore.

I think for me the moment she believes is when she finds the doll dissected in the drawer. There is absolutely no way that could have happened unless she really has gone loopy herself.

Yes, exactly. And that’s basically what makes her totally then buy into it. And I think that Narges had steps before that that she’s kind of in two minds whether she’s losing her mind or there is really an entity in the building but then [finding the doll] is the biggest moment of revelation for her.

In terms of practicalities of shooting it, were you able to shoot in order to help the arc of the characters?

No, that wasn’t possible. Like many other film productions it was dependent on our budget and our time and our locations. The great thing is that when you’re working with wonderful actors, part of the fun is to track the characters’ arc and knowing exactly where they are at any given scene that you’re shooting.

We couldn’t shoot it chronologically. We wanted to, like any other filmmaker but that was just not possible.

There’s a certain theatrical element to it as well. I can see it working as a stage play without needing many changes.

That’s interesting. The way I tried to approach it as well was very much I tried to rehearse a bit before getting into the shoot. By rehearsal I don’t mean blocking the scenes, I mean really exploring the characters’ background and really getting deep into that.

I’m very pleased you feel that. It’s a very contained story because most of it happens in an apartment block so that’s probably one of the other reasons.

One thing that really excited me from the get go, it was like this was a very Gothic story but instead of a haunted house in Victorian England, it’s a haunted house story set in Tehran, Iran. And that was the thing: it’s a classic story but set in a very different world. That’s what excited me.

I read in one of the interviews you gave around the time the film came out, that Avin Manshadi, who plays the young girl, didn’t really have any experience beforehand.

No

She’s incredible given that’s the case. How much coaching or how did you encourage her to give the performance?

It was first and foremost she was super talented and super smart as a child. Narges who plays her mother, has experience with children and was a great help for me. It was almost we teamed up to get that performance from her, together.

It was mainly about getting her trust. One of the cool things about children is that they have such strong imaginations so the key is to get them to trust you and then try to tap into that imagination. Once you’re there they really open up to you all the ideas.

Before the shoot I had these rehearsals with her which I didn’t do anything from the script, I just kept playing these role playing games with her. “I’m a big bad wolf, you’re three little pigs…” and these sorts of games so that she gets to know that we’re in this fantasy world together. Then when we were approaching the shoot I just told her we’re basically doing the exact same thing but it’s set up being just us two, and the whole crew is watching you doing it. (laughs)

And she completely got that. Like I said, she’s so smart that with a little bit of coaching like that she was well into it.

Did she get frightened at all by the content? Kids are very receptive to atmosphere and if you’re building an atmosphere of dread and threat on set, did she pick up on that?

No. First of all we were very careful that the moment we said “cut” that we were back to normality with her and she wasn’t frightened at all. Throughout I kept telling her, “don’t believe in any of this stuff because it’s all stuff I made up in my head. And we’re just playing make believe.”

I think she had a lot of fun. She also was looking at Narges who plays her mother in such awe. Narges was always very maternal towards her and Avin wanted to impress her, so she was constantly copying her, learning from her, thinking that’s how a professional actress worked on these things.

You’ve done another feature since: what lessons did you take away from Under The Shadow into Wounds? Were there things that you thought, ‘no I’ll never go down that route again’ or things where you went, ‘that worked, I’m going to do that again’?

I learned a lot of lessons from Under the Shadow, like how to be more efficient because my second feature I really had some known actors in it. It was still pretty low budget but it’s still an indie and we were up against it, so learning how to be efficient and economical and disciplined helped. That came from Under the Shadow.

I also became more confident about how to work with the actors; my process in dealing with actors was pretty much the same as in Under the Shadow.

Another huge thing: I’m a massive fan of sound and sound design and experimented with my editor and sound team on Under the Shadow and I did the exact same thing on my second feature. There were things that I tested on my first feature that I realised that were useful tools for the future.

 

Under the Shadow is out now in a limited edition from Second Sight. Read our review here

Click here to order from Amazon.co.uk

Thanks to Sneh Rupra at AIM Publicity for help in arranging this interview.