Drift

“I seem to gravitate towards stories about outsiders and the bonds, or the human connections, that strangers develop. Whenever I make a film, I feel the need to be really honest about the subject matter, but especially when you’re making a film about a Black African woman who is a refugee, because there is so much baggage attached to it. It’s not about being politically correct, it’s about being honest to the human experience. The last thing I would want is to be emotionally manipulative or to exploit the characters. In terms of style, this film might be different from my previous two films, and if you didn’t know already, you’d probably never guess it had an Asian director. But there’s so much in the mise-en-scène and the emotions that make it feel like an Asian film. I think it also reads the same way as my other films in the sense of not judging the characters and humanizing the subject matter.”

Anthony Chen