An Interview with Asena Nour
Asena Nour tells us about her first narrative film, See You in the Dark, which centres around a young female artist who’s hacked by an ominous troll on the opening night of her latest exhibition. What follows is the search for the perpetrator in a night-long odyssey and an exploration of sexual trauma.
This is your debut narrative project. How have you found this experience has differed so far from working on documentaries and experimental films?
The beauty of documentary and experimental filmmaking lies in its accessibility, simplicity, and the fact that it is often a solitary process. See You in the Dark is a continuation and evolution of my documentary and experimental work – the film pays homage to my documentary roots with its intimate verité style and it’s based on a true story. As a filmmaker, I’m often drawn to stories of heritage, migration, womanhood, and the taboo; I think See You in the Dark draws on all these thematic threads. It is set in the rhythms of everyday life, honours the multicultural and working-class London that raised me, and shines light on the often exhausting and precarious nature of being a girl in this city.
The fact that I have worked with ‘real’ people and contributors in my early work allowed me to approach my actors in a similar manner – it is all essentially about building trust. The only real difference is funding, which is the exact reason that as a working-class filmmaker I began making documentaries – there were stories surrounding me and I had no choice but to capture them. The biggest takeaway I have is that narrative filmmaking is a purely collective and collaborative project. This film has been shaped by every single cast and crew member who trusted me enough to bring my vision to life.
What kind of challenges have you faced during this film’s journey from an idea to production? How did you overcome them?
I began writing the script as a form of creative healing. It was emotionally demanding to write something raw and personal that gave voice to often unspoken and undisclosed stories of sexual trauma. The writing took over me at some point – I believe our shooting script was around draft 40. My writing was extremely open and honest, and it meant that everyone who joined the project had to also be willing to have these conversations. When my producer Tamannara Siddik joined the project in May 2021, it began forming into something much bigger than us, more ambitious than anything we’d ever done before. We pitched the project at a Girls in Film event in November 2021, which brought us many fated and fortunate connections and a bigger audience.
The biggest challenge we faced with the film was the lack of institutional funding. We started saving up every penny we made and launched a crowdfunding campaign so it could materialize. I usually welcome challenges and limitations. I think it helps develop creative instinct, but I also stubbornly urged that we stick to our ambitious vision and never limit ourselves. On the last day of our shoot, we were shooting guerrilla style and got caught by security (I was certain we’d be arrested). It meant I had to change the location for the final scene, but the fact that I had done so many drafts allowed me to immediately reimagine a new ending. The new ending paid off completely – it was so much stronger than the original ending I had written, I was in tears as we wrapped the film. The only constant from idea to production has been maintaining our patience and perseverance and reminding ourselves why this story mattered, why this film needed to be made.
You had a crowdfunding campaign to help get the film made – what was that process like?
We spent a large part of development applying for funding and taking on film jobs to save money for the film. By December 2021 we had raised £5k and we were well on track to making the film, so we decided to launch a crowdfunding campaign on Greenlit after witnessing the successes of our peers who had done the same. It was truly a community effort to get the campaign noticed and the generosity of our peers and networks meant we successfully raised £6.5k. From the start, I really wanted to push a grassroots approach to filmmaking that prioritised collective and community healing, so it felt right to reach out to organisations and charities that shared a similar ethos. We had the wonderful support and backing of industry organisations and charities like TAPE Collective, Girls in Film, Times Up UK, and Glitch. Our executive producer Kate Shelley basically wrote the Bible on how to successfully crowdfund for a film, and it was with her knowledge and support that we knew exactly what steps to take in creating a campaign that intrigued and moved people.
What has been the highlight of the filmmaking process so far?
Working on every part of this film has been such a wonderful experience – I think you really need to throw yourself into the whole process. Working closely with my DoP Dylan Bruce when developing the intimate verité style of the film was an incredibly exciting process. We dug deeply into every feeling and emotion in the script to create a visual style that embodies a visceral lived experience, but also hints at how trauma can often create a dissociative and disembodied response.
I’m grateful I got to work with two dedicated and talented actresses, Buket Komur and Rakiya Hasan. We spent our rehearsal period building a real and dynamic friendship between [their characters] Nora and Kyra and talking through the subtle and changing emotions of the girls. I felt so empowered on set by my wonderful and patient crew who were extremely sensitive and respectful when filming emotionally intense subject matter. Working closely with my sister Melis Ece, who worked as the incredible production designer and whose lived experience also provided the inspiration behind the film, was also one of the biggest personal accomplishments I had making this film.
What do you hope audiences take away from this film?
I made this film to heal, to bear witness to the joys and horrors of growing up as a young working-class ethnic minority in London. See You in the Dark is dedicated to my sister Melis Ece, the women in my life, the girls I grew up with. It is dedicated to weary girls who are doing the most with the least. I really hope the audience for this film finds solace in seeing female friendships that encourage compassion and care, I hope survivors feel seen, held, and affirmed. Ultimately, I want to redirect the question of sexual assault away from “did it happen, where is the evidence, is it punishable?” to the broader structures that are often dismissive and fail to provide infrastructures of care to survivors and the non-linear process of dealing with sexual trauma. I see this film as sort of an initiation into womanhood – Nora and Kyra must go on a journey to find the hacker and confront the original wound, and there is something freeing about taking things into your own hands and taking your power back.
What’s next for you?
My short documentary My Mother’s Mother is premiering at the BFI in June, which was commissioned by Create Studios as part of their ‘Making My Mark’ project. I’m writing my second narrative short about an immigrant mother who develops an online shopping addiction and developing my feature debut about an intense friendship between two girls over the course of a summer in Turkey, which becomes fraught in the face of growing political and social tensions in the country.
You can follow Asena on Instagram here.
Interview edited by Emily Garbutt.
