“Sky Peals”, interview with director Moin Hussain

September 9, 2023

Moin Hussain, director, "Sky Peals" on exploring identity, loneliness and the human desire for connection through his sci-fi-inflected, service-station-set feature debut.

"Sky Peals", interview with director Moin Hussain Sarah Bradbury

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British director Moin Hussain always found motorway service stations to have something otherworldly about them. Spaceship-like in appearance and transient in nature, such a place seemed the perfect setting for his feature debut “Sky Peals”, a sci-fi-inflected tale of alienation in modern Britain.

Returning to the sci-fi movies he watched growing up, such as Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, he saw the premise from a fresh perspective: instead of the heroic arc of the protagonist boarding the spaceship, he contemplated the family Roy Neary would have left behind.

Moin Hussain shared how he constructed his character of Adam, a British-Pakistani man living alone and working night shifts in a burger joint in a service station, and cast Faraz Ayub, previously seen in supporting roles in series such as “Line of Duty” and “Screw”, to take on the central role of the introverted and awkward young man.

He explained his compulsion to film on film, and how this helped him achieve his eerie aesthetic and uncanny atmosphere in the story’s mundane locations, from the fast-food outlet to an after-work party.

The search for identity is one both specific to his character’s mixed-race roots and a broader existential one, held in Adam’s question: “Do you ever feel that you’re in the wrong place?”. Through the medium of genre, “Sky Peals” dwells on the yearning for contact and connection we can all feel, particularly in the wake of lockdown, where even standing next to someone in a queue can be a source of comfort.

“Sky Peals” has been presented in Settimana della Critica section at the 80th edition of Venice Film Festival.

Plot

Adam works night shifts at a motorway service station, living a small and lonely life with little human contact or connection. Upon hearing that his estranged father has died, Adam finds himself piecing together a complicated image of a man that he never really knew and uncovers details of his life that he struggles to comprehend. Learning that his father believed he was not human, Adam initially dismisses the notion outright. However, unable to shake the thought, he begins to wonder: if this were true, what would that make him?

Written by: Sarah Bradbury

Settimana della Critica

Guest

Moin Hussain Sarah Bradbury

Film

Sky Peals

Festival

Critics Week - Venice

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