Dain Iskander Said – Interchange #LFF2016

PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Dain Iskander Said, director of Interchange, from the 2016 BFI London Film Festival.

To this day, there are people and tribes who believe that a photography has the power to steal your soul. Dain Iskandar Said’s film Interchange, started from this concept – it particularly was inspired by a photography depicting an old Borneo tribe cleansing themselves in a river from the effects of having been photographed.

The story has the sense of a genre film, falling somewhere between fantasy, thriller and horror, and it takes place in the modern world. We speak with the director about the challenges of working within the horror genre, and whether he sets out to expand its limits or whether he likes to begin with a concept and see if he can adapt it to a particular genre. We also ask him about the effects, impressive also due to the fact that Malaysia and Indonesia, where the film was produced, do not have effects as advanced as other countries.

There is more to Interchange than effects, which is why we also reflect upon the various themes dealt with in the film, including that of heritage and the power of the photographic image, the latter due to the fact that the object of photography plays a key role in the narrative.

INTERCHANGE. In a drag club a man has been completely drained of blood. The killer has left two signatures – the victim’s empty veins arranged in a pretty mesh and a smashed glass negative from an old plate camera. A forensics photographer with peeping-tom tendencies and an understanding of arcane photography is brought in to investigate. But his obsession with an alluring neighbour in his apartment block is giving him all kinds of shivers. This supernatural thriller is shot with impeccable style and foreboding mood, complete with rainstorm rooftop fight scenes, a hooded man with massive finger claws and an ancient curse cast upon a tribe in Borneo a hundred years ago. Malaysian director Dain Iskandar Said studied in London, where he first encountered the anthropological images that inspired this tale. Beautiful and strange, it’s a rare species of thriller that truly captures the imagination as it spreads its wings.