Bassam Tariq Talks Lessons He Learned From Kevin Feige, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother

(Photo Credit - Amazon MGM)

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother director Bassam Tariq spoke with ComingSoon about his action film that blends faith with spectacle. Tariq discussed the film’s themes, what lessons he learned from the canceled Blade movie, and more. It’s out today in theaters in LA and New York City and will expand to more theaters next week.

“From writer-director Bassam Tariq, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother stars Mahershala Ali as Latif, a devoutly religious hitman who struggles to balance work, faith and fatherhood. When his wife dies, he embarks on a desperate journey across Houston to protect his children, confronting the forces closing in around him – and the beliefs threatening to unravel within,” says the official synopsis.

Tyler Treese: Bassam, the idea of a hitman being religious, it feels inherently conflicting, but at the same time, religion and violence have always been intertwined. This film is full of contradictions, and I think that’s what makes the characters so interesting and human. So what made you want to really explore that intersection of faith and violence?

Bassam Tariq: Yeah, man, you nailed it. You nailed it. I think for me, religion is weaponized to gaslight people, right? It’s used to hurt people. And at the same time, religion is a powerful tool for grace, mercy, forgiveness. And I wanted to explore all of that because I feel like I’m constantly teetering on how I feel about community and faith and all these things as well.

So some days I’m Hatty, and I’m kind of like, “Oh, I want to burn it all down,” right? And some days I’m Latif, and I’ve got this performance of piety and this and that. But I really wish I’m like Qadir, just kind of be curious and believe and just be firm in what it is.

I love that all these characters are a part of you. You also wrote the film on top of directing, and there are so many little touches in this film that make the world feel so lived-in, like the weird chipmunk porn and John Cho has grills. Every aspect just feels a little more detailed than the average movie is. Is that all on the page, or how do you work with your collaborators to put all these little unique touches?

Yeah, so those lines that you mentioned were all written in the script, and I think, yeah, I just love detail. But I think my collaborators played a massive role in this. Akin McKenzie, our production designer, is somebody that really pushed me to—because the furries in the beginning were going to be animated, and he said, “No, you want it to be a cuddle puddle video.” I’m like, “What’s a cuddle puddle video?”

So it’s a video of, you know, furry—it’s like lo-fi beats. You know, like how you can watch YouTube and have lo-fi beats? So there are videos you can watch of people that are just holding each other very calmly in the furry community. And it’s not a dig at all, but I think it’s quite beautiful, where it’s just like people holding each other, and you’ve got this beautiful lo-fi music in the background. And I was like, “Oh, that’s dope,” you know what I mean?

It’s kind of like it’s a safe way for you to feel warmth. And I think that’s also something that Fatiha, I think, is struggling with. And I think the other part is like, “How do I feel warmth?” I think she’s trying to figure out, “How do I feel a sense of connection?”

I want the film to feel like it’s a rocket that’s just moving, and I didn’t want it to ever stop for any of these things. But at the same time, to find moments where we can just breathe were so important. And I really give credit to my editor, Cam, that would push me to be like, for example, the scene with Giancarlo in the car, where he’s playing the character Abdul Malik, and he’s telling the story of Khadijah and how she got her name.

It’s like we’re kind of slowing down to tell a story, and we have little visuals of it, and it was really difficult for me, but I’m really happy we did it.

You and Mahershala were supposed to do Blade. That fell apart, but we got such a personal film out of it, and it has more attention. Were you able to take positives out of that whole experience?

Bassam Tariq: Of course. Honestly, Kevin Feige taught me how to think big. I think for all of the things that people throw at them, the guy is phenomenal at, “Okay, how do we keep upping the ante?”

And I kept asking—or they call it “plussing.” I think that was the term that they would use. So I think a part of me was also thinking similarly, “How do we do that?”

The other plus, or the other thing that I took, was really audience and listening and hearing the audience. Whereas their testing has to be so careful because they have to keep everything so secretive, I was able to really test my movie with audiences and to really see where I needed to cut or where I needed to explain a little bit more, and how to make sure that the fights would land better and all these other things.

I think I found testing to be really, really—I don’t want to call it testing—but to really watch it with an audience and different kinds of audiences was humbling and really helpful in us finding what the film is, and also understanding that it’s not going to be for everyone, which I think is also a hard thing for me to realize because I want everyone to like me.

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Thanks to Bassam Tariq for taking the time to talk about Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.

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