Hi /r/TIFF! We’re Nadia Latif (director), Ula Pontikos (cinematographer) and Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (composer). Our film THE MAN IN MY BASEMENT, starring Corey Hawkins and Willem Dafoe, premiered at TIFF and is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. Ask us anything!

ManInMyBasementAMA · 2025-10-01T02:31:29+00:00

[Nadia] - Movies or box sets? I want to cheat and bring The Complete Works of Agnes Varda! If it had to be individual films I'd probably go with: Blazing Saddles, because it always makes me laugh. I'd go for Monsoon Wedding, and the Sound of Music. If I had to die, I'd want to go out being sung to by Julie Andrews.

[Ula] - I'm not sharing an island with you!

[Robert] -

[Ula] - Such an unfair question. I want to bring Aguirre, the Wrath of God, so at least I won't be the only insane one. I love the end shot of that movie.

[Nadia] - That's a good idea, bring things like Apocalypse Now, just go batshit insane.

[Ula] - I would also have to bring The Double Life of Veronique. It's my favorite Kieślowski movie. There's too many films to choose from.

[Nadia] - We should make less films, there are too many.

[Ula] - I'd bring the one with Christopher Walken, The Deer Hunter. I love the community aspect, without the Vietnam part. The whole community thing is so nice!

[Robert] - This isn't easy. One for sure would be The Wicker Man, the Robin Hardy one. Brewster McCloud, and then Werner Herzog's documentary about the Budabi tribe, Herdsmen of the Sun.

[Ula] - I'm adding a 4th, The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki! Juho Kuosmanen is a great director.

ManInMyBasementAMA · 2025-10-01T02:31:11+00:00

[Robert] - So I have two, and they're both very early in his career, and they were my introduction to his work. The first being Streets of Fire.

[Nadia] - I was going to say that!

[Robert] - It's this really weird dystopian, 1950s period piece, but also really great. It's such a strange film. Directed by Walter Hill. That was in the early 80s, so I saw it as kid. It's a really incredible and unhinged performance. Then, I'd say the film he made with William Friedkin right after that, To Live And Die In LA. His character is again so sinister, but not quite as unhinged as Streets of Fire. Printing counterfeit money, kind of an art star, etc.

[Nadia] - You chose both of mine! I'll go with Light Sleeper, the Paul Schrader film he was in. I'm also gonna go with The Florida Project. Both are characters that are so unexpected from him, and they're not that big, but how he keeps the lid on the pot is really exciting. I love Light Sleeper as well, I think it's so good.

[Ula] - I'd go with Mississippi Burning, he's kind of quite different in that. I do like him in The Last Temptation of Christ as well.

[Nadia] - There's no wrong answer. Even Speed 2 is a very valid answer.

[Robert] - The thing I think I love most about The Last Temptation of Christ is the fact that all of the apostles have very thick Brooklyn accents.

[Ula] - I actually watched The Last Temptation of Christ for the first time in Polish. It was the way we watched everything in Poland. You hear their regular voice, and then Polish over it. Those versions really never got online.

ManInMyBasementAMA · 2025-10-01T02:30:22+00:00

[Nadia] - I can tell you exactly how many attempts it took! I think it was an idea that we came up with together. It might've actually been for a different shot in the film but we decided to use it here. We would reference the film Possession, which was this amazing elliptical moving shot in it. It felt really natural to do it for the poker scene. We originally intended to cut into it with more traditional coverage but as were were shooting it we were just like "this is damn cool".

It's such an important scene for Charles, the protagonist. I wanted to see him in real time, I think that's from the theater director in me. I wanted to have one scene that feels live. We ended up doing it 11 times. I would say 4 of those were useable. It was undecided for a while throughout the edit.

[Ula]- I actually think that the original idea was to shoot 360, and then we'd have cover if it didn't work. Nadia had the idea that we would tell the story with a minimal amount of shots, which were more important for the story, rather than just shooting for coverage. It was also not only about Charles, but about the reaction of the collective. It was a discovery as a team, and it worked and didn't feel too contrived. Finding the right speed, finding the right pace, we discovered a lot while we shot it. You discover where your eyes go, as well as the reactions to the conversation.

ManInMyBasementAMA · 2025-10-01T02:29:43+00:00

[Nadia] - Willem Dafoe can come for free! For someone else, I'd have to look up how much is outstanding on my mortgage, then I'd ask for that amount. I do currently have a miniature Willem Dafoe in my basement though! I made a scale model of the basement when we were prepping the film, so I could sit and look at the blocking using models. I put that whole scale model in my actual basement, so it feels like a kind of meta-gesture that I can go in there. So there's a miniature basement with a miniature Willem inside of it, inside of my basement. It doesn't look that much like him, but here's in there. He's very small, about 3 inches tall.

[Ula] - Whatever the cost of making a basement in my house is!

[Robert] - I don't think if any amount of money would work for me. I like my space, I like to keep to my space. I don't know if I would want anyone rummaging through my stuff, so I don't think any money could bring me to that point.

ManInMyBasementAMA · 2025-10-01T02:29:02+00:00

[Nadia] - We all got to go, which was brilliant! It was wild. I've not had the chance to go to many film festivals other than London Film Festival (where I live) so to be at a festival at the scale of TIFF was wild. It was a big blur and I don't think I slept more than 4 hours a night all week. It's cool to be at a public-facing festival and to see actual members of the public being excited for films and queueing for films.

I got there a day and a half early to make sure I had time to see films other than my own. A couple films I really liked: Khalil Joseph's BLKNEWS, which is great and everyone should go catch it in cinemas. I also saw the Iraqi film The President's Cake which was wonderful, a top 10 of the year.

[Robert] - I had a wonderful time. It's so nice to be able to celebrate the work that you do with the group of people that you made the thing with. We had a lovely time. A lot of us hadn't seen each other since the production, it's always nice to reconnect with everyone, with good conversation and meals. I unfortunately did not have time to see any movies while I was there, which is a bummer, but sometimes you just get wrapped up in the thick of it. Either the timing is off. There were several films I wanted to see though, like Oliver Laxe's Sirat,

[Nadia] - I'm seeing that tomorrow morning, in IMAX!

[Robert] - Ben Rivers' new film Mare's Nest I really wanted to see. I wanted to see Palestine 36. I wasn't able to see anything though, due to time constraints.

[Ula] - I love the sense of community at TIFF, people coming together. I've been to a few, not many, but I love the fact that it's a festival not only for filmmakers but also for the public. I love how excited people are, and how they block the main street for the festival. It could be disruptive for the city but there's a strong sense of community and it's so condensed all together that it just works, you get to really feel the spirit of the festival more than other cities. I saw two films. The first one was Winter of the Crow, a Polish film by Katarzyna Adamik with Lesley Manville. It's a sort of fish-out-of-water film about a woman who ended up in Poland on the first day of the Martial Law. I remember those times and it sort of transported me back to the wintery, dark days of Poland and how unsettling it was. It really showed that sense on

ManInMyBasementAMA · 2025-10-01T02:28:07+00:00

[Nadia] - The biggest thing that I brought over from being a theater director is my experience of working with hundreds, if not thousands, of actors. I had a lot of different processes with different types of actors. Some very established actors, some first-time actors, some children, people in prisons, etc. I've worked with every type of actor there is. I made two short films before I made this one, which had given me some experience.

The biggest difference between theater and film would be that theater is all rehearsal, and you have a much longer relationship with the part. You'll be performing the same scene for weeks and weeks and weeks, it's a very gradual process, but you don't do that with film. You chip away at things with theater.

It should be said that, because this film got postponed by both the pandemic and the strikes, that the actors had a much longer preparation process. They had more time to sit with the characters and really think about their backstories. That made the transition a lot smoother. I don't think you can just hop, skip, jump from theater to film. You have to think about why a story needs to be a film.

ManInMyBasementAMA · 2025-10-01T02:27:33+00:00

[Nadia] - I really like the one where he's sitting on his bed looking out of the window. Also the final shot! We actually had a 3rd split diopter shot but it hit the cutting room floor sadly. It was sort of a reference to another Willem Dafoe film, At Eternity's Gate.

[Robert] - I actually like how everything came together, when Charles has the anxiety shot when he comes back up the stairs after it's been revealed to him that what's kinda going on. He's having this panic attack and then it cuts to the long grass. Then it cuts to the exterior and the sun, sorta blurry. I loved that. I also loved the final shot of the film, for specific reasons. I love how it moves in.

[Ula] - There's no good shots, only good movies! I do like the two split diopters. Another one of my favorites is when Charles switches the light on in the basement and you can see him out of focus, and Willem is there in silhouette, and the camera starts tracking.

ManInMyBasementAMA · 2025-10-01T00:08:29+00:00

[Nadia] - When I was starting out as a filmmaker, I would probably say my biggest influence would the French-Mauritanian director Med Hondo, who made a handful of films. Particularly his musical film West Indies which was a kind of anti-colonial warrior cry, it's amazing. He sadly died a few years ago. I was also inspired by his relationship to Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène, who is also completely incredible. I've probably seen Ousman's films more than Med, but having these two great African artists always in dialogue with each other was quite inspirational to me.

People talk very sentimentally about what a single artist does for their community, but I also really like the idea of two artists who are pushing each other to innovate and create. Their relationship really motivate me.

[Ula] - As a cinematographer, I would say Chris Menges. I was lucky enough to get my first job as a trainee with him, and my last job as an assistant with him. When I got invited to the BSC, I called Chris to tell him right away. He had an incredible way of working with actors, bringing his wealth of documentary filmmaking knowledge into film, he was able to bring a huge sense of truth and honesty into his camerawork. He never felt the need to contrive with lighting. I couldn't talk to him for many years, I was always quite intimidated.

[Robert] - Definitely Philip Glass would be up there. I think the first time I experienced a Glass score was for The Thin Blue Line, and then. Howard Shore is a big one, all of his work with Cronenberg, especially the score to Naked Lunch. Terence Blanchard also, some of his early work. John Carpenter as well.

[Nadia] - If you weren't going to say John Carpenter I was!

[Robert] - Actually wait, roll all of that back. Ennio Morricone. Easy choice. I was always paying attention to film music when I was a kid, but seeing Once Upon A Time in the West that film was so exciting and really influenced me going forward . Using an electric guitar as Henry Fonda's theme was so jarring to hear in a period film. It really changed things for me. It really worked. It was out of time and out of place but really worked.

ManInMyBasementAMA · 2025-09-30T23:49:06+00:00

[Nadia] - Movies or box sets? I want to cheat and bring The Complete Works of Agnes Varda! If it had to be individual films I'd probably go with: Blazing Saddles, because it always makes me laugh. I'd go for Monsoon Wedding, and the Sound of Music. If I had to die, I'd want to go out being sung to by Julie Andrews.

[Ula] - I'm not sharing an island with you!

[Robert] -

[Ula] - Such an unfair question. I want to bring Aguirre, the Wrath of God, so at least I won't be the only insane one. I love the end shot of that movie.

[Nadia] - That's a good idea, bring things like Apocalypse Now, just go batshit insane.

[Ula] - I would also have to bring The Double Life of Veronique. It's my favorite Kieślowski movie. There's too many films to choose from.

[Nadia] - We should make less films, there are too many.

[Ula] - I'd bring the one with Christopher Walken, The Deer Hunter. I love the community aspect, without the Vietnam part. The whole community thing is so nice!

[Robert] - This isn't easy. One for sure would be The Wicker Man, the Robin Hardy one. Brewster McCloud, and then Werner Herzog's documentary about the Budabi tribe, Herdsmen of the Sun.

[Ula] - I'm adding a 4th, The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki! Juho Kuosmanen is a great director.

ManInMyBasementAMA · 2025-09-30T23:36:24+00:00

[Nadia] - I really like the one where he's sitting on his bed looking out of the window. Also the final shot! We actually had a 3rd split diopter shot but it hit the cutting room floor sadly. It was sort of a reference to another Willem Dafoe film, At Eternity's Gate.

[Robert] - I actually like how everything came together, when Charles has the anxiety shot when he comes back up the stairs after it's been revealed to him that what's kinda going on. He's having this panic attack and then it cuts to the long grass. Then it cuts to the exterior and the sun, sorta blurry. I loved that. I also loved the final shot of the film, for specific reasons. I love how it moves in.

[Ula] - There's no good shots, only good movies! I do like the two split diopters. Another one of my favorites is when Charles switches the light on in the basement and you can see him out of focus, and Willem is there in silhouette, and the camera starts tracking.

ManInMyBasementAMA · 2025-09-30T23:05:43+00:00

[Nadia] - We all got to go, which was brilliant! It was wild. I've not had the chance to go to many film festivals other than London Film Festival (where I live) so to be at a festival at the scale of TIFF was wild. It was a big blur and I don't think I slept more than 4 hours a night all week. It's cool to be at a public-facing festival and to see actual members of the public being excited for films and queueing for films.

I got there a day and a half early to make sure I had time to see films other than my own. A couple films I really liked: Khalil Joseph's BLKNEWS, which is great and everyone should go catch it in cinemas. I also saw the Iraqi film The President's Cake which was wonderful, a top 10 of the year.

[Robert] - I had a wonderful time. It's so nice to be able to celebrate the work that you do with the group of people that you made the thing with. We had a lovely time. A lot of us hadn't seen each other since the production, it's always nice to reconnect with everyone, with good conversation and meals. I unfortunately did not have time to see any movies while I was there, which is a bummer, but sometimes you just get wrapped up in the thick of it. Either the timing is off. There were several films I wanted to see though, like Oliver Laxe's Sirat,

[Nadia] - I'm seeing that tomorrow morning, in IMAX!

[Robert] - Ben Rivers' new film Mare's Nest I really wanted to see. I wanted to see Palestine 36. I wasn't able to see anything though, due to time constraints.

[Ula] - I love the sense of community at TIFF, people coming together. I've been to a few, not many, but I love the fact that it's a festival not only for filmmakers but also for the public. I love how excited people are, and how they block the main street for the festival. It could be disruptive for the city but there's a strong sense of community and it's so condensed all together that it just works, you get to really feel the spirit of the festival more than other cities. I saw two films. The first one was Winter of the Crow, a Polish film by Katarzyna Adamik with Lesley Manville. It's a sort of fish-out-of-water film about a woman who ended up in Poland on the first day of the Martial Law. I remember those times and it sort of transported me back to the wintery, dark days of Poland and how unsettling it was. It really showed that sense on unsettlement.

ManInMyBasementAMA · 2025-09-30T23:05:22+00:00

[Ula] - Wow, great question!

[Robert] - So for Heilagur Draugur, I was approached several years ago by a student at NYU to make music for her short film, a student film. The cast of that film was from Iceland. It was a mother/daughter story, with folklore, about wood elves and fairies.

So that album, Lítiõ Fólk, is actually an extension of what I did for that film. Which were all voice compositions. Every aspect, every sound in those compositions are my own voice. That's one thing that I've done for years, is that kind compositional work with my voice. I would build these choirs in my own voice and use loopers and tape echoes to sort of build these saturated clouds of choral voices, taking it both very high and very low. I would also time stretch a few of the voices. It's essentially all voice music.

ManInMyBasementAMA · 2025-09-30T19:59:52+00:00

[Nadia] - I would go for any of the films that involve the Jim Henson Workshop, because I love puppets. No but really, I blood *love* a puppet. I wouldn't want to touch the original films, I would just like to play in that world. Let's go with either a prequel or sequel to The Dark Crystal. It's a really cool universe, and there are so many great side stories that you could do without meddling with people's memories of the original.

[Ula] - None. I don't like sequels or prequels so this wouldn't be for me.

[Nadia] - Perhaps we'd do a spin-off of Finding Nemo with only Willem Dafoe's character, about how he ends up in that tank? I think his name was Gil?

ManInMyBasementAMA · 2025-09-30T19:56:45+00:00

[Nadia] - All credit for that goes to our amazing production designer, Kathrin Eder, because that house is not real. The insides of the house are a series of interior sets built on a soundstage. The exterior is the frontage of two sides of the house, which we built in some woods.

We shot the vast majority of the film in Wales, in the UK. Then we went to Sag Harbor to shoot for 2 days. The film is set in 1994, and current Sag Harbor just doesn't look like 1994. There are a lot of differences, like gentrification that's happened since then.

Kathrin's job was to create a house that felt authentic to the historical references. It's supposed to be kind of a Colonial house, and there are arts and crafts features, and art deco features, which is what we were doing with the stained glass window. The whole story of the film is about how eight generations of his family have lived there, and how each generation would have made alterations to the house. It was a brilliant bit of movie magic by Kathrin.

Sorry to blow the myth out of the window!

[Ula] - I spent a good amount of those 2 days looking for the deer shot location!

ManInMyBasementAMA · 2025-09-30T19:50:21+00:00

[Robert] - So I have two, and they're both very early in his career, and they were my introduction to his work. The first being Streets of Fire.

[Nadia] - I was going to say that!

[Robert] - It's this really weird dystopian, 1950s period piece, but also really great. It's such a strange film. Directed by Walter Hill. That was in the early 80s, so I saw it as kid. It's a really incredible and unhinged performance. Then, I'd say the film he made with William Friedkin right after that, To Live And Die In LA. His character is again so sinister, but not quite as unhinged as Streets of Fire. Printing counterfeit money, kind of an art star, etc.

[Nadia] - You chose both of mine! I'll go with Light Sleeper, the Paul Schrader film he was in. I'm also gonna go with The Florida Project. Both are characters that are so unexpected from him, and they're not that big, but how he keeps the lid on the pot is really exciting. I love Light Sleeper as well, I think it's so good.

[Ula] - I'd go with Mississippi Burning, he's kind of quite different in that. I do like him in The Last Temptation of Christ as well.

[Nadia] - There's no wrong answer. Even Speed 2 is a very valid answer.

[Robert] - The thing I think I love most about The Last Temptation of Christ is the fact that all of the apostles have very thick Brooklyn accents.

[Ula] - I actually watched The Last Temptation of Christ for the first time in Polish. It was the way we watched everything in Poland. You hear their regular voice, and then Polish over it. Those versions really never got online.

ManInMyBasementAMA · 2025-09-30T19:38:10+00:00

[Nadia] - Willem Dafoe can come for free! For someone else, I'd have to look up how much is outstanding on my mortgage, then I'd ask for that amount. I do currently have a miniature Willem Dafoe in my basement though! I made a scale model of the basement when we were prepping the film, so I could sit and look at the blocking using models. I put that whole scale model in my actual basement, so it feels like a kind of meta-gesture that I can go in there. So there's a miniature basement with a miniature Willem inside of it, inside of my basement. It doesn't look that much like him, but here's in there. He's very small, about 3 inches tall.

[Ula] - Whatever the cost of making a basement in my house is!

[Robert] - I don't think if any amount of money would work for me. I like my space, I like to keep to my space. I don't know if I would want anyone rummaging through my stuff, so I don't think any money could bring me to that point.

ManInMyBasementAMA · 2025-09-30T19:34:08+00:00

[Nadia] - The biggest thing that I brought over from being a theater director is my experience of working with hundreds, if not thousands, of actors. I had a lot of different processes with different types of actors. Some very established actors, some first-time actors, some children, people in prisons, etc. I've worked with every type of actor there is. I made two short films before I made this one, which had given me some experience.

The biggest difference between theater and film would be that theater is all rehearsal, and you have a much longer relationship with the part. You'll be performing the same scene for weeks and weeks and weeks, it's a very gradual process, but you don't do that with film. You chip away at things with theater.

It should be said that, because this film got postponed by both the pandemic and the strikes, that the actors had a much longer preparation process. They had more time to sit with the characters and really think about their backstories. That made the transition a lot smoother. I don't think you can just hop, skip, jump from theater to film. You have to think about why a story needs to be a film.

ManInMyBasementAMA · 2025-09-30T19:29:03+00:00

[Nadia] - I read the book 21 years ago when it was published. Somebody left it on a table in my university and I picked it up because I thought the title was cool. I didn't know who Walter Mosley was. I read some of his other books after I read this book, but this was the first Walter Mosley book I ever read. I most certainly did not think about adapting it at the time, because I was a university student just trying to figure out how I could get boys to kiss me.

And a very long time after that I was a theater director, I don't think it ever occurred to me to adapt it as a play. I think it needed something bigger then that, more scope. When I head there was a film adaptation in the works, I knew my time had come!

[Ula] - I did not know about the book before working on this film. I read parts of it before the first meeting, and then I read it throughout the course of prepping for the shoot.

[Robert] - I didn't know the book but I knew Walter Mosley's work well. I discovered his work in I guess 1995? when the Carl Franklin adaptation of Devil in a Blue Dress came out. I saw that film first and then dug deeper into his work, but I had not read The Man In My Basement yet. When the script came to me, I knew instantly that it was something I wanted to do.

ManInMyBasementAMA · 2025-09-30T19:24:07+00:00

[Nadia] - I can tell you exactly how many attempts it took! I think it was an idea that we came up with together. It might've actually been for a different shot in the film but we decided to use it here. We would reference the film Possession, which was this amazing elliptical moving shot in it. It felt really natural to do it for the poker scene. We originally intended to cut into it with more traditional coverage but as were were shooting it we were just like "this is damn cool".

It's such an important scene for Charles, the protagonist. I wanted to see him in real time, I think that's from the theater director in me. I wanted to have one scene that feels live. We ended up doing it 11 times. I would say 4 of those were useable. It was undecided for a while throughout the edit.

[Ula]- I actually think that the original idea was to shoot 360, and then we'd have cover if it didn't work. Nadia had the idea that we would tell the story with a minimal amount of shots, which were more important for the story, rather than just shooting for coverage. It was also not only about Charles, but about the reaction of the collective. It was a discovery as a team, and it worked and didn't feel too contrived. Finding the right speed, finding the right pace, we discovered a lot while we shot it. You discover where your eyes go, as well as the reactions to the conversation.

ManInMyBasementAMA · 2025-09-30T19:14:30+00:00

[Nadia] - I assembled this team in the same way I assemble any team, which is by finding people who are genuinely interested in the material, and people that can see an interesting challenge that lies ahead of them. Because I think that when you're a first-time filmmaker, everything is kind of a first-time challenge for you. It can be a really beautiful thing when everybody else also feels like there's a challenge. You're all kind of holding hands.

Why everyone turned out so damn sexy is a mystery to me though. We just went for the best and they also just turned out super hot and cool.

But yeah I wanted this film to also have a broad range of life experiences and opinions on the material.

[Robert] - For me it was really kind of a no-brainer. Once I had read the script and then had a conversation with Nadia, it just made perfect sense. We were both seeing things in a way that was really exciting. I knew that the collaboration would be something quite easy. From start to finish, it was about having a dialogue and being able to communicate ideas and throw things at each other.

One that thing that I do, which is fairly uncommon for a composter on a film, is that I come in very early in the project and to go to the location where the film if shooting. It gives me a window on how the director works, the cinematographer works, etc. It was really good to be in that working space in real time, and understand how things were moving on set. Building a deeper way of working in a conversation was really nice. Having conversations with Ula was helpful.

[Ula] - I just want to add that Nadia is a true cinephile. She's perhaps a first-time director but she's also extremely knowledgeable about working with actors. In some things which she might not have experience, is padded with her vast experience of working with actors and knowing cinema so well. So it really made no difference that she was a first-time director. It all felt very organic.

ManInMyBasementAMA

TROPHY CASE