Mis­an Har­ri­man: ​“There is grace in the process of hav­ing open wounds.”

A busi­ness­man, played by the great David Oyelowo, is sud­den­ly forced to expe­ri­ence the depths of human despair and is made to rebuild his life from scratch in the time­ly and soul­ful debut short fea­ture by Mis­an Har­ri­man. Yet The After is not nec­es­sar­i­ly about such dis­mal events, as it goes on to explore the ways in which peo­ple are able to step back from the abyss, recal­i­brate their inner-psy­che and locate some sem­blance of bal­ance in their lives. Har­ri­man is a fêt­ed stills pho­tog­ra­ph­er whose work cap­tured the glob­al mood in the wake of the mur­der of George Floyd and the sub­se­quent rise of the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment. This nat­ur­al tran­si­tion into mov­ing images sees Har­ri­man chanelling pet themes of trau­ma and the sur­pris­ing and unique ways that we both process and own it.

LWLies: The After plays out like the real­i­sa­tion of a per­son­al fear of los­ing fam­i­ly, sta­tus and a con­nec­tion to oth­er peo­ple. Where did the idea for the sto­ry arise and how per­son­al is it?

Har­ri­man: After the moment of deep reflec­tion we’ve all had, fol­low­ing Covid, I want­ed my first mov­ing image piece to reflect the soup of life after we’ve all had to endure an act of God that no one real­ly could have pre­dict­ed. And then, of course, there are oth­er parts of this sto­ry that are from the tapes­try of my own lived expe­ri­ence. And there are also some parts that are just con­jured up from my over­ly-active imag­i­na­tion. And all of it came to the sto­ry that is The After. 

As some­one who has ded­i­cat­ed so much time to depict­ing the lega­cy of vio­lence through still images, how did it feel to depict an actu­al moment of vio­lence in your film?

Wow, we’re not giv­ing too much away. The vio­lence por­trayed in the film, we’ve been very inten­tion­al with how it was filmed, and I think the focus is on the deep loss that is brought upon by vio­lence. But, def­i­nite­ly the focus is very quick­ly on the loss and in the act of vio­lence itself. It was a joy for me to work with the best stunt coor­di­na­tors and safe­ty pro­fes­sion­als in the business.

What was excit­ing for you in the tran­si­tion to film cam­eras from still cam­eras? Were the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the film cam­era ever daunt­ing for some­one so used to tak­ing stills?

No – it’s fas­ci­nat­ing to me how com­fort­able I felt mov­ing from stills to film. I felt tru­ly on a film set; I was breath­ing in life in full fideli­ty. I felt like I was home. And, you know, there’s a Robert Frank quote where he says, ​“The eye must learn to lis­ten before it looks.” And I feel my eyes have been lis­ten­ing since I was a lit­tle boy. And so much of the com­po­si­tion­al abil­i­ty, I would say that I have, has tran­si­tioned from still to mov­ing imagery very seam­less­ly. And my under­stand­ing of lens­es and light have all helped me tell the sto­ry exact­ly how I imag­ined it in my head.

Can you describe the nature of your col­lab­o­ra­tion with co-writer John Julius Schwabach, par­tic­u­lar­ly in cre­at­ing what is such a per­son­al film for you?

In cre­at­ing such a per­son­al film, work­ing with a writer like JJ, who’s so young and yet so open to col­lab­o­ra­tion, was a joy. He helped take the sto­ry from my head and real­ly bring it into a met­ro­pol­i­tan city like Lon­don and have it be part of that. It was a waltz. It was a real waltz of cre­ativ­i­ty, where we both pushed each oth­er and probed the nar­ra­tive arc and emo­tion­al nuance that this sto­ry deserved. It was an incred­i­bly easy and enjoy­able expe­ri­ence to work with such a bril­liant young writer.

How did your expe­ri­ence chore­o­graph­ing sub­jects for pho­to­graph­ic por­traits car­ry over into your work with David Oyelowo?

Well, David is some­one that I’ve looked up to and I feel like I’ve grown up with. We also have a very sim­i­lar lived expe­ri­ence. We are, you know, born in Nige­ria, raised in the UK and glob­al cit­i­zens, and there were so many unspo­ken con­ver­sa­tions on set. It took just a glance for him to under­stand what I was need­ing and where his per­for­mance could go. And I felt that was a deep sense of trust and inti­ma­cy for him to go to the place that he went to. And I gen­uine­ly believe his per­for­mance is one for the ages. So my pho­to­graph­ic expe­ri­ence prob­a­bly helped me to be sure of how to frame such a mighty per­for­mance. But I also would say that our lived expe­ri­ence and sim­i­lar­i­ties real­ly helped to give him the trust he need­ed as an actor to soar on the screen. 

What do you say to peo­ple who believe that there is no respite from trauma?

This film is real­ly answer­ing that ques­tion because even though it has trau­ma in it, it’s real­ly a film about heal­ing. It’s a film that hope­ful­ly will allow you to know that there is grace in the process of hav­ing open wounds, both vis­i­ble and invis­i­ble. The jour­ney of build­ing your­self back up from such unimag­in­able pain and loss, brick by brick, is one that there should be no shame of. And one that the com­mu­ni­ty of friends and fam­i­ly that we rely upon should rec­og­nize as part of all of our jour­ney. So I think the respite is in the recog­ni­tion of growth and heal­ing that I hope this film represents. 

Do you hope to move to fea­ture film­mak­ing? Do you have any inter­est in filmed documentary?

Yes. I have a doc­u­men­tary project in devel­op­ment at the moment that I can’t speak too much about, but I’m very excit­ed about. And I would love to make fea­ture films. You know, I’m read­ing scripts at the moment and there are numer­ous ideas in my head that, uh, I should extract with a pen and lots of voice notes in the near future.

Mis­an Harriman’s The After streams on Net­flix from 25 Octo­ber. Por­trait cour­tesy of Mis­an Harriman.