Riz Ahmed and Bas­sam Tariq on the per­son­al jour­ney of Mogul Mowgli

Mogul Mowgli is the debut nar­ra­tive fea­ture from doc­u­men­tary mak­er Bas­sam Tariq. It was co-writ­ten with Riz Ahmed who also stars as Zed, a rap­per on the cusp of star­dom who, on a rare trip to see his fam­i­ly back in North Lon­don, is struck down by a debil­i­tat­ing ill­ness. We spoke to them about bend­ing gen­res, satiris­ing your­self and the shared expe­ri­ence of a diaspora.

LWLies: What was it that you saw in each other’s work that made you want to work together?

Riz Ahmed: We met social­ly through mutu­al friends in New York. I hadn’t seen any of Bassam’s work when we met but lat­er I saw These Birds Walk and it was unlike any doc­u­men­tary I’d ever seen. I want­ed to work with him because he bends genre; he can’t help but sub­vert expec­ta­tions. Mogul Mowgli is a fam­i­ly dra­ma but also a com­e­dy, a hor­ror, a musi­cal and a spir­i­tu­al film. I think he just has a lan­guage for mon­grel-hood and merges genre in a way that unique­ly accom­mo­dates our experience.

Bas­sam Tariq: When we met I’d seen Four Lions like sev­en times. I’d nev­er seen any­thing like that in my life and what Riz brings to it is so incred­i­ble. There is this one moment in the film after Adeel [Akhtar]’s char­ac­ter dies and you see your broth­er and you want to talk to him but you don’t know if you should. That encap­su­lates so per­fect­ly what it’s like to be a West­ern Muslim.

You both have Pak­istani her­itage but Riz, you’re from Lon­don, and Bas­sam, you’re from New York. Was there still a big over­lap in your life experiences?

RA: There are dif­fer­ences in the com­mu­ni­ties here and there, but essen­tial­ly the emo­tion­al ground and expe­ri­ences that this film cov­ers in based on our shared expe­ri­ences as dias­po­ra artists who are try­ing to find a way for­ward by look­ing back. Look­ing back means con­fronting things we were try­ing to escape on some lev­el and yet the source code, the map for nav­i­gat­ing our way for­ward, is often in the past. This film is a bit­ter­sweet love let­ter to the home we are try­ing to run away from that is our destiny.

The film remind­ed me of the Quran­ic sto­ry of Ayoob [Job in the Old Tes­ta­ment]. Was that part of the inspi­ra­tion for it?

BT: We want­ed to look at our own Islam­ic folk sto­ries: in the Hamzana­ma the sto­ries of the Prophet’s uncle where he goes on mys­ti­cal jour­neys; 1001 Ara­bi­an nights; Ayoob. It’s all part of our tra­di­tion and we want­ed to pull from all of it. In Sufism we also have ideas of ill­ness as a means of purifi­ca­tion and through ill­ness you have veils lift­ed from your heart. So we thought what if we use this idea that hal­lu­ci­na­tions are also veils being lift­ed. They may look like pan­ic attacks or fevers dreams but they could also be him learn­ing about himself.

Some moments seem very self-crit­i­cal: going by a nick­name that’s more accept­able in the West; not spend­ing any time where you are from but being obsessed by your her­itage. How was it cre­at­ing some­thing that’s also dig­ging at your personally?

RA: Part of what the film is doing is tak­ing the piss out of me. Your true self isn’t that per­sona, so part of what the film is doing is rip­ping the piss out of the per­sona. But part of the jour­ney that Zed is going through is recog­nis­ing that part of him­self is illu­so­ry. I enjoyed that self-lac­er­at­ing por­tray­al. It’s like when you watch Woody Allen play­ing a neu­rot­ic artist, or in Atlanta or Curb Your Enthu­si­asm – there’s a great tra­di­tion of per­form­ers satiris­ing them­selves because at the heart of that expe­ri­ence there is some insight they want to share.

You weren’t tempt­ed to go the Matt Damon route of writ­ing your­self as a super cool genius who’s great with the ladies?

RA: Ha! Maybe it’s a fac­tor of our sub­ver­sive self-aware­ness that we cre­at­ed this ver­sion of the char­ac­ter. Or maybe it’s our lim­it­ing self-belief that we can’t see our­selves as genius super­heroes who are great with the ladies. But for what­ev­er rea­son that tem­plate, that idea of self, isn’t avail­able to us in the dias­po­ra. We are not yet super heroes. There isn’t that her­culean tem­plate for us but there is – per­haps as there was with the Jew­ish or Ital­ian dias­po­ra – some­thing messier, grit­ti­er, more com­pli­cat­ed and surprising.

This isn’t a white gaze film: there’s no expla­na­tion about why women get their peri­ods more dur­ing Ramadan or why pass­ing a joint with your right hand would be a prob­lem. Did you wor­ry that you might alien­ate a white audience?

BT: It’s some­thing keep­ing me up at night more now that review­ers are going to see the film; crit­ics are the cul­tur­al gate­keep­ers and every­one is check­ing Rot­ten Toma­toes scores. We don’t have enough crit­ics and cul­tur­al writ­ers to not just to iden­ti­fy this a cul­tur­al clash sto­ry but look at it a lit­tle deep­er the way the three of us are speak­ing now.

It’s also a much fun­nier film than I was expect­ing, in par­tic­u­lar Nab­haan Rizwan as the rival rap­per. Where did the idea for that char­ac­ter come from?

BT: Riz real­ly want­ed Nab­haan on board and I wasn’t sure. He sent us a track of him rap­ping and he was real­ly tal­ent­ed, so I talked about how he’d do this char­ac­ter and at first I thought what he was doing was a bit big. When Riz and I sat down with our music super­vi­sor, Abdal­lah, he had to remind us that we are all in our thir­ties and the kids aren’t lis­ten­ing to what we’re lis­ten­ing to. So this [char­ac­ter] is in that vein of what is pop­ping for them. We’re in a new phase of Pak­istani rap­pers, so as ridicu­lous as he got he was ground­ed in what that style seems like from our thir­tysome­thing perspective.

What do you think you took from this col­lab­o­ra­tion that will inform your work going forward?

BT: I think gen­er­al­ly direc­tors feel they need to act like they know every­thing even when you know you don’t know shit. Admit­ting that is the hard­est part for me. I think that’s how you need to lead, to being able to lean into my crew and into Riz and just shut up and lis­ten. Lis­ten to the envi­ron­ment and to what peo­ple are say­ing around you and adapt­ing the best you can.

RA: To lean into our own sto­ries and to cre­ate from a per­son­al place. And the val­ue of col­lab­o­ra­tion. Bas­sam and I gave each oth­er per­mis­sion to be our­selves. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to sur­round your­self with peo­ple who allow you to be your true self – in a way that’s when you actu­al­ly meet your­self. That’s some­thing I’m going to keep going for­ward. It’s not just about what work you do, it’s who you do it with.

Mogul Mowgli is in cin­e­mas from 30 Octo­ber; to expe­ri­ence the world of the film, head to mogul​mowgli​.co​.uk