Family comedy to poetic horror: Riz Ahmed talks ‘The Long Goodbye’ with Hasan Minhaj

Director Aneil Karia and Ahmed talk about storytelling, representation and creative process behind the masterpiece

Claiming several awards to its name and multiple nominations under the category for Best British Short Film, Riz Ahmed’s The Long Goodbye is an explosive rap record that allows you to experience the thought-provoking dystopian world of a racist Britain.

In a conversation with the American Asian comedian and TV host, Hasan Minhaj, writer and co-creator Ahmed along with director Aneil Karia opened up about the creative process behind the harsh yet funny tonal shifts in the masterpiece.

The short film begins with multiple drawing-room conversations taking place in a sub-chaotic scene of a British Asian family get-together. The tone eventually pivots to a rather surreal horrific sequence depicting the consequences of hate speech and right before you become familiar with it, act three introduces a subtle poetic performance for the concept to immerse itself through words.

While Minhaj thought it was an interesting choice to make, he asked the creators the reason for “juggling a number of moods within the short film.” Upon tackling three tones in the film, Karia mentioned that Ahmed approached him to create a product that is unconventional and defies the traditional filmmaking rules.

“One of the things I love most about the way the film opens – it almost feels like we're dropped in. We're crossing, we're talking, the girls are in the other room, Riz is playing with a younger boy, but like there is no lengthy introductions. It is a feeling of full immersion. Was that intentional?” asks Minhaj.

Karia responded to that with a firm yes. “It had to feel like five minutes in any other British Asian home in any other town. A universal feeling was part of the inspiration for this film.”

Expanding on misrepresentation, he further added, “We’ve seen these slightly lazy tropes of shorthand depictions of British Asian families on the screen and they never quite rang true for us, our experiences and our family histories so getting that nuance right was of key importance.”

“The realness of it made it easier to submerge the different jarring tones actually,” said Karia in a statement.

A family like mine

Adding to Karia’s point, Ahmed remembered a personal anecdote from when the movie had released. He shared that people came up to him saying, “the film moved them to tears” and he always assumed that they were talking about the second half. But to his surprise, what resonated most with people was the opening sequence.

They would say, “no, it’s the opening scene. I've just never seen a family like that on screen. A family like mine. It just feels so real”.

Explaining the emotion, Ahmed shared, “Yes, there’s trauma, there's a bit of a gut punch at the heart of this film but there's also a lot of joy at the start and there's also a lot of defiance at the end. I think it's really important to tell stories the real way.”

Ahmed believes that “to be an artist is to name your pain” and that is what he does in The Long Goodbye. Sharing a mutual feeling, the creators of the film agreed on it being “one of the most healing creative processes and one of the most fulfilling projects” they’ve done.

The right people

Upon the process of casting the right character to depict a real South Asian family, Minhaj asked Karia about his encounters with people while finding the right fits for an authentic experience.

Karia called the team “lucky” to have had the expertise of a UK based casting director like Sheheen Baig. He credited the success of the casting process to Ahmed’s previous experiences as well.

Ahmed later revealed that the guy who plays his dad in the short film was actually his uncle, his mom’s brother, calling it a risky decision. “Business with family can go in all sorts of directions. There’s no one out there to sabotage you like your uncle,” chuckled Ahmed. Minhaj, understanding the joke, called it a “gutsier choice than any of his projects before.

Finding the real mix was an ultimate challenge. Thinking about it now, it was such a mix of options. There were traditionally trained actors, non actors like Riz’s uncle, and young people, fresh to the industry as well” elaborated Karia on the casting pool.

“In the end, we had to find people. It was all about finding people with improvisational instincts in a condensed amount of time. I was very adamant on not filling every silence with poetry or hilarious gags and fillers like that. We wanted people to hold the confidence to embrace silences, sit back, speak over each other.” said Karia.

Their efforts in curating a family as real as possible was acknowledging that “everyday improvisation is imperfect.” Ahmed believes their success is due to the cast who ended up embracing the everyday awkwardness that somehow feels normal in south Asian families.