When The Man in My Sotem, starring Willem Dafoe and Corey Hawkins, arrives at theaters on Friday, director Nadia Latif hopes that the audience will leave who has written the story.
“I want people to be thinking about who tells them stories … and actually do their own type of research on what they think is their place in the world,” Latif told Reuters after the world premiere of the film at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The film, which is the debut as director of Latif and an adaptation of a novel by Walter Mosley of the same name, follows the story of a young black whose life is on the verge of crumbled. He is about to lose his family’s house when a stranger knocks on his door with a strange request: rent his basement for a considerable sum.
Dafoe, who plays the mysterious tenant, said he did not take much thought after reading the script to know that he wanted to be part of the movie.
“I liked the story and I liked how you can discuss certain things that are worrying me,” he told Reuters.
“Once (Latif and me) she started talking, I realized that I was poor in some of my knowledge of some of the things that are discussed in the movie, and needed to be educated … and she was great in that.”
Throughout the film, the characters of Dafoe and Hawkins face in a series of tense monologues, all set in the dirty basement, who face issues of race, privilege and history.
“I hope people feel restless. I think there are some really big and ugly things that are discussed inside the movie,” Latif said.
