LIVE - Ghosts, Grief, The Crone with Zeshaan Younus & Darcy Staniforth | Nite Drift

All right, without further ado, director of this great film, Zeeshan Younis.

So I think, you know, my first question For you, really, I would like to just jump into it.

I'd like to jump into a way that may feel even just a little uncomfortable.

I wonder if, based off of the collective grief of the characters that you have a sit-through in this film, if you have a personal experience, one related with this ghost-like experience, this liminal state that you have us sit in, that you want to share, that helped inspire this?

Yeah, so I think the true nucleus of the film is based on my relationship with my father, who is still with us.

He has never emotionally been with me, and I think the immense presence of the necessity of that relationship right the desire to have a relationship with somebody that is supposed to be so close to you has really informed the majority of the decisions i made in my life and the trajectory i've taken has been very much crafted by his lack of true fatherhood

And

it's an interesting thing because it's a grief that's with me constantly.

And it's a death I've mourned many times, but it's a person that's still here.

And also, the person that was one of my primary caretakers was my grandma, his mother.

And

my lack of a relationship with him was reflected in the immense amount of grief and pain and haunting that I felt with her passing.

And it was a very unceremonious passing, and it was a passing that was very much dictated by his control over what I could not or could get access to.

And not having access to him, I didn't have access to his mother and my grandmother, who played such an important role in... you know, feeding me and giving me security in a very turbulent time in my life.

And when I lost her, I think it was during a very pivotal point of my life where I was going through an immense amount of self-destruction.

So I've talked to Jim about this in the past, but there was this period of my life where I was being hounded by this kind of spectral crone that I would see constantly.

And I would see this figure or this, I call it, I would see a feeling.

I would see this feeling on the nights where I was being the most self-destructive.

So it was really interesting to see myself go down a street and see a fragment of the shadow and be like, I know I should not be on this fucking street right now.

I know I should not be going in this direction with my life.

And it was almost this really interesting, it's like spiritual bumper rails you know if you're bowling and um and it was yeah it was just a feeling and a texture that i had a majority of my life with my father and then also with her passing and just the immense weight of having family that you're not close to and you're kind of warning about on an ongoing basis even though they're still with us and you have to process it and A lot of that is reflected in this film and the feeling of needing to go through and get out the other end and feel like, okay, I'm not stuck in this womanality forever.

In the beginning monologue that Renée Gagné, who as Parker does in the acting class, that's an amalgamation of many different stories in my life that all happened.

with certain things kind of changed, but all put together in one over-encompassing feeling of how I felt during those years.

So, for better or for worse, you all know me significantly better now because of this film.

You know what I like to look at and what I find value in and what I like to listen to.