In Camera
In Camera takes us inside the life of a jobbing actor. This debut feature from Naqqash Khalid doesn't always hang together, but it's often an audacious and exciting experience
“Smile. Say the words on the page. It’s not hard,” Adem (Rizwan) tells himself as he stares into a mirror. It’s not always as easy as it sounds. Adem is an aspiring actor on the bottom rung of the British film and TV industry. When we first meet him, he’s a bloodied corpse lying beneath two detectives on a cop show, and that’s one of the few jobs he manages to book. Most of his time is spent in bleak audition rooms, standing in a lineup of brown-skinned men, feeling his sense of self slipping away with every encounter.
Naqqash Khalid’s In Camera is a perceptive satire on the life of a jobbing actor, emphasising the unique challenges faced by an Asian actor who finds himself pigeonholed by a blinkered industry. Auditioning to play a terrorist, Adem is asked by the casting director to try it with an accent: “Something more… Middle Eastern, maybe?” Adem is often left dumbstruck by his circumstances, and Rizwan’s impressively nuanced performance is crucial for animating such a passive protagonist.
Khalid approaches his directorial debut with a bold vision and a surfeit of ideas, but the film often feels vague, with more surreal interludes failing to land. The film is at its best when Khalid lets us sit in a discomfiting moment, particularly an extraordinary scene involving a grieving couple, which is stunningly well-played but almost too painful to watch. In Camera doesn’t always hang together, but when it snaps into focus it’s an audacious and exciting picture to experience.
Released 12 Sep by CONIC; certificate 15