When the psychological thriller man in my basement, starring in Willem Dafoe and Corey Hawkins, hits theaters on Friday, director Nadia Latif hopes the audience will question who wrote history.
“I want people to think about who tells them stories … and actually have to do their own form of examination of what they think their place in the world should be,” Latif told Reuters after the film’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The film, which is Latif’s function director and an adaptation of a Walter Mosley novel with the same name, follows the story of a young black man whose life is on the verge of crumbling. He is about to lose his family’s home when a foreign knocking on his door with a bisarr request – to rent his basement for a hefty sum.
Dafoe, who plays the mysterious tenant, said it didn’t think much after reading the manuscript to know he would be part of the film.
“I liked the story and I liked how it is able to discuss certain things that are in the air of concern for me,” he told Reuters.
“Once (Latif and I) started talking, I realized that I was deficient with some of my knowledge of some of the things talked about in the movie and I had to be trained … and she was great for it.”
Throughout the film, Dafoe and Hawkins’ characters are in addition to a number of excited monologues, all of which are set in the dingy basement that confronts themes of race, privilege and history.
“I hope people feel disagreed with it. I think there are some really kind of big, ugly things being discussed in the movie,” said Latif.
