Today we chat with Pardis Parker, Canadian award-winning director, about how the past, present, and future have shaped his journey as a writer as a part of our series on #EssentialMuslimFilms.

The Past:

What was the first film that had a major impact on your life?

I grew up in the 80s watching a lot of television, so the first movies that made an impact on me were the live action Sunday Night Disney Movies on ABC. Everything from MARY POPPINS to HERBIE GOES BANANAS to BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS. I loved those films. They instilled in me the belief that anything was possible. In fact, to this day, I still get worried when I cross the street, because I’m scared there might be an invisible car on the road (like there was in “Now You See Him, Now You Don’t”).

Was there a single film that made you want to become a filmmaker? Or a comedian?

I can’t say for sure. I certainly loved laughing when I was a kid. THE NAKED GUN, POLICE ACADEMY, and VACATION movies were early favorites. And anything that transported me to another world (on this planet or otherwise) found a place in my heart — STAR WARS, BACK TO THE FUTURE, FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR, GHOSTBUSTERS, TOP GUN. It was a great time to be young. As for stand-up comedy, I grew up in Canada, so I watched a ton of Just for Laughs and CBC comedy specials when I was younger. I’d record them on VHS tapes and watch them over and over. At one point I even convinced my Grade 6 teacher, Mrs. Reid, to allow me to bring one of my favorite Just for Laughs tapes to school to watch together with the class. It was an episode with Jeremy Hotz and Harland Williams. I still remember the jokes — Hotz had a set where he made fun of candy and cartoons (“Hercules. Has the strength of ten men. How come eleven guys never got together and beat the crap out of him?”) and Williams did a joke about phone sex that amazed me because the punchline came out of nowhere (“So here I am, phone in one hand, naked as a bluebird, when all of a sudden, this disgusting pig just starts banging on the phone booth door. And I was just like, excuse me! I’m trying to make love in here!”).

Most writers have “day jobs” in order to stay afloat. What was the strangest job you had before becoming a filmmaker?

Oh, I never really had a strange job, I don’t think. I owned a small business for a few years as a way to make money to make movies. Prior to that I had stints with the United Nations and with volunteering overseas in places like Guadeloupe, Australia, and the Solomon Islands. The Solomons was probably the strangest, mostly because I got malaria while I was there (I survived), and because I then subsequently found myself in the middle of a military coup from which I had to be airlifted out of by the Royal Australian Air Force in one of their Hercules cargo jets. In fairness, they did give us juice boxes for the flight to Australia, so, you know, not a total loss.

The Present:

How do you find ideas, and how do you choose which ones to work on?

Ideas aren’t so hard to come by, in my experience. I tend to wonder about things a lot, and that inquisitiveness not infrequently leads to story ideas. The ones I devote time to are the ones with the potential to uplift the spirit or to feed into a sense of hopefulness (I’m a sucker for romance and underdogs).

What films are keeping you inspired at the moment?

I watch about 200 movies a year, plus all the television I watch, so anything and everything that has bold and confident writing and direction tends to stand out for me. MIDNIGHT SPECIAL, THE WITCH, and EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! were fantastic this year. WHIPLASH, NIGHTCRAWLER, MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, EX MACHINA, and BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD are a few others that come to mind from recent years past. And then the two films I can’t help but watching over and over again are GOOD WILL HUNTING and THE MATRIX. And THE DARK KNIGHT, I suppose. So three films. And DEAR JOHN. Four. But that’s it. Also DRIVE.

The Future:

If you could make one film, with no restrictions in place, what would that film be?

A family adventure film for Disney. The type of film I used to watch with my parents when I was a kid. Something in the vein of JUMANJI or NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM or FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR. My God. That’s the dream. It’d be such an honor to earn the opportunity to tell a story that tickles the imagination of kids around the world. That instills in them the belief that anything’s possible, that any limits they perceive are self-imposed, and that their capacities are far greater than they could ever comprehend.

About AFGHAN:

What can you tell us about the development and making of AFGHAN?

AFGHAN was the first film I ever made, and since I had never written or directed a film before, it was a crash course in the whole process. The first element, obviously, was the script. The idea came from something I had witnessed years earlier, when I was living in Montreal. Immediately after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, there was a wave of violence and persecution directed against anyone who looked even remotely Arab or Muslim. I experienced a lot of that first hand, even though I was neither Arab nor Muslim, but there was one thing in particular that I’ll never forget — a car on my street was spray-painted with the words, “Go Home Arab.” And that became the jumping-off point for this short film some seven years later. What I wondered was, what happened next? What happened to the owner of the car after it was vandalized? How did they react? How could they have reacted? And the message I wanted to send was that sometimes the best way to deal with hatred is to subvert it, to expose its folly, to use humor to undermine its very foundation. Next up was learning how films were made, and the filmmaking community in Halifax, Nova Scotia, was extraordinarily helpful in that regard. I cold-called a bunch of people whose shorts had screened at local film festivals and started asking them questions — how does film processing work, what’s the difference between daylight and tungsten stock, between Kodak and Fuji film, etc. etc. etc. Then I started piecing my crew together. The stroke of luck was in finding Alastair Meux, a local cinematographer who had worked on mega-budget commercials for Playstation and Lexus, and on music videos for U2 and Jamiroquai. He was kind and supportive and encouraging. He helped me put the rest of the crew together, and to figure everything out for gear. Then came the location, where luckily the house of a young filmmaking couple in Halifax was available. And the last thing was the cast. The film only has two characters — a brown guy and a white dude. I was the only option for the brown guy, and for the white dude I found Mark Little, a fantastic comedian from the city’s exploding stand-up comedy and sketch comedy scene. We shot everything shortly thereafter in one 18 hour day, and then I spent the next few months learning everything I needed to learn about post-production. It took a long time, mostly because we shot on film, which introduced delays at every step, but I loved every second of it.

AFGHAN was shown in more than 150 film festivals. How did you organize submissions, travel with the film, and then promote it while at each festival?

It only screened at 60 or 70 festivals, I think, but even still, getting it out there was a job in itself. I sent it to every festival that agreed to give me a few waiver based on the awards I had already won. Luckily for me the film was well-received and we got into a wide range of fests, from super small to super large.

How has stand up informed your filmmaking sensibilities?

It’s made me a better writer over the years. I get into and out of scenes fairly quickly, and I pay a lot of attention to pace and rhythm.

Are there any topics that you feel are off limits when it comes to comedy?

For me, personally? Of course. There are lots of things I wouldn’t want to tell jokes about. But in principal? No, absolutely not. The purpose of comedy is to give a voice to the voiceless, to speak truth to power, to serve as a flashlight that exposes the roaches of the world. The last thing you want to do is limit what you can point it at.