As a queer Afghan growing up in Vancouver, finding relatable characters on the screen was rare for film director Alexander Farah. It had long been a dream that he would create the representation that was lacking in film himself, but he never expected he would take home an award for it.
Farah is celebrating One Day This Kid, a short film about Hamed, a young Afghan Canadian boy who is coming to terms with his own sexuality, being announced as winner of the SXSW Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Short Film.
He says it is “an incredible honour” to have bagged the award, one which came as a huge surprise despite the “resoundingly warm” reception the film has garnered since it opened to audiences last year.
The 18-minute project, produced by Vancouver-based company Wallop Film and BOLDLY, had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and has been travelling the North American film circuit since.
Praise has rolled in thick and fast, particularly from other queer men of colour who had never before seen themselves represented in such a way, says Farah.
“It’s very moving to hear so many people feel so touched by the film. There’s been these long emails that sort of pour in afterwards, being like, ‘Thank you. I haven’t seen anything quite as nuanced when it comes to queer storytelling,’” he said.
“That feels the most rewarding, hearing that from other queer men, because there’s a lived-in experience there that we can automatically connect to.”
The film’s inspiration was derived from an artwork Farah stumbled upon around six years ago, Untitled (One Day This Kid...). The piece, by American artist and activist David Wojnarowicz, combines a photograph and text to offer a brief snapshot into the life of a young, queer boy growing up in a society that rejects him.
“It’s a very retrospective snapshot look at this person’s life, how they’re going to be faced with persecution, a loss of civil rights, a loss of freedom, how they’re going to be under surveillance, all of these things that really spoke to me when I first discovered it,” he says.
Farah first came out as queer around eight years ago, and the piece, published in the early 90s, resonated with him in a way he hadn’t experienced before.
“I was like, I know this is a very universally beloved text by a prolific queer artist, so what if I used it as a vehicle to recount my own experiences growing up gay and growing up Afghan, and coming into my own identity?”
Farah applauds the narratives currently trending in film and television that highlight unapologetically queer characters, but says he made a conscious effort to step away from the method while filming so as not to further eclipse the stories of those still battling less positive experiences.
“I’ve been on panels where people want to show queer joy, queer romance, and all of the uplifting, euphoric sort of aspects of being queer, which I’m all for, but I think that it does a disservice to the way that I grew up,” he says.
“The amount of years that I spent in despair and sinking into that heartbreak and that sense of hopelessness, that I wanted to still capture in some ways.”
With such sensitive subject matter and a story so inextricably linked to his own, finding a fitting cast for the film had been one of production’s most challenging aspects, he says.
Attempting to secure a six- or seven-year-old boy in the role of a young, Middle Eastern queer boy, brought “immediate backlash” from all manner of communities. Ultimately, the leading role was given to the nephew of a woman Farah went to school with in Grade 3 – the only other Afghan family that he knew of in the Lower Mainland.
Elyas Rahimi was cast alongside his real-life sister Tahera and their mother Roohafza, resulting in a “special and tender” filming process that Farah says he hopes comes through on the screen.
As for the emotional response that the film may elicit, Farah says he chooses not to describe how he wants his viewers to feel. That, he says, is up to them to decide.
All he hopes, he says, is for audiences to reflect on the nuance that comes with queerness, identity and its relationship to family.
“If someone were to take away any element of those things, I would be quite happy,” he says.
