Whilst terminal illness and imminent death might not be the obvious source for a delightful surreal comedy, Yasmin Afifi has built a humorous and affecting world within those parameters in BAFTA nominated short Jellyfish & Lobster. It’s a touching and very personal project created as her graduate film at the National Film and Television School, which follows two non-conformist, unapologetic patients of a care home who refuse to let their illnesses or age define them. One of ten shorts that we highlighted as favourites in our NFTS Graduate Showcase recommendations at the start of the year, Jellyfish & Lobster rides on a surreal Cocoon-esque premise as a swimming pool becomes a vehicle for the anarchic pair to escape their reality and immerse themselves in the draw of past youthful vibrancy. Afifi delicately balances real and magical elements on screen, rendering the well-honed script all the more powerful and recently spoke to us about her surprising struggle to find an Egyptian actor of the necessary age here in the UK, the nature of film stock as a medium echoing time running out for the characters and giving her audience permission to laugh at the darker side of life.
[The following interview is also available to watch at the end of this article.]
I first saw Jellyfish & Lobster at Aesthetica and it is so great to be able to speak to you today, please tell us a bit about the film.
It’s a magical, realist, dark comedy set in a British care home about two elderly residents, both coming to terms with the inevitability of the end of life who make a discovery that reinvigorates their sense of youth.
Sadly, we live in quite an ageist society but you have centred your film around two older, kinky protagonists which I really enjoyed.
The idea originated when I lost two people really close to me to cancer and I realised that they never allowed themselves to be victimised by the disease. There’s something about the moment when your life is given a limitation, you start living as you would if you didn’t have any, and you lose all sense of consequences to your actions. What could you possibly go through that’s worse than what you’re already going through? What are you going to face that’s worse than death? I then realised that wasn’t just specific to an illness, I think that’s also true too as you get older, as you age, you stop caring about what people think. I think you really live your most authentic self when you’re at that age.
I wanted to explore what happens when the bar for what is appropriate or inappropriate goes out the window. What happens if you just throw away all the expectations that society has of you as an elderly or sick person? That was so fun to sit in and explore and it’s so beautiful to see the reaction that the film had gotten. I think it speaks to how as we age a lot of people, in particular women, suddenly have these ageist expectations placed on them. I decided Grace was going to be hypersexual, bold and I just wanted her to be who she was. I never judge my characters when I write them so there was a process of people asking, “Would she say that? Would she do that? Do we have to put that in?” And there was always something at the back of my head that was saying it’s not our job to judge our characters. Let them exist, let them be. And so for her to be embraced the way that she has been is great.
So obviously central to the film is this relationship between Grace and Mido. You’d written these amazing characters, was it challenging to find the right actors to portray them?
Yes and no. I thought it would be but then as soon as I saw both of them I knew they were Grace and Mido. I saw Flo Wilson in Help by Marc Munden, and I instantly thought she was incredible. I knew Sayed Badreya was Mido from his Instagram page and at the time when I didn’t even know if he was an actor. We had an incredible casting director called Charlotte Chapman who helped with the casting on The Crown and she told us, during their casting process, how difficult it was when trying to find an actor to play Mohamed Al-Fayed as there is just a real lack of Egyptian male actors of that age range in the UK. So I went down this rabbit hole looking through followers of prominent Egyptian actors as I thought, “If you’re an Egyptian actor, you’ll be following other Egyptian actors” and I eventually came across Sayed’s page. From his personality and the videos he posted, I just knew this guy was Mido.
I wanted to explore what happens when the bar for what is appropriate or inappropriate goes out the window? What happens if you just throw away all the expectations that society has of you as an elderly or sick person?
He was based in LA so I thought it might not happen as we didn’t have the budget to fly him over but I reached out anyway. I then found out that he was an actor who had been in quite a few prolific Hollywood films. He spoke about always being typecast as the bad Arab or the terrorist or those sorts of roles and suddenly he was reading a script that felt human and that spoke to his human experiences outside of what people think of him as an Egyptian.
You’ve got the elements of magic realism in there. What is it about the genre that speaks to you as a filmmaker and what did embracing that approach enable you to convey?
In the beginning, I always thought that to be taken seriously as a filmmaker and to tackle serious subject matters, you had to make serious, hard hitting straight dramas. I’m certainly not against those and I would make such a film if the opportunity came but personally, I like the idea of taking stories and subject matters that we’ve seen portrayed in a certain way and subverting the way that they’ve been told. When you’re tackling subject matters that are quite dark, like the idea of ageing, illness and mortality, then you’re sitting in the perspective of someone who is surviving or trying to survive. If you’re truly sitting in that perspective then you’re also sitting in the perspective of someone with the need to escape reality. That’s where the magical realism comes into it and that honestly feels more truthful to me than if it was just a straight sort of drama. I also think magical realism allows you to access more of the comedy and the humour in subject matters which aren’t normally associated with those genres and means you can access even more as you’re not being restrained by reality.
I like the idea of taking stories and subject matters that we’ve seen portrayed in a certain way and subverting the way that they’ve been told.
Let’s talk about those stunning surreal scenes in the swimming pool, how were these realised?
These were all filmed at the shallow end of a swimming pool, credit here to my DOP Linda Wu and her camera team. We spoke through references and images and I really trusted her to take the lead with it. We sort of had to break the shots up as Aslan Amjad, who plays the younger version of Mido struggled to hold his breath for a lengthy amount of time and so we had to break it up into 10 second intervals. It was also peak summertime and 34 degrees outside so a swimming pool was handy!
Jellyfish & Lobster has an ethereal dreamlike, nostalgic feel to it. What guided the construction of the film’s visual style and how did that feed into the story you wanted to tell here?
We wanted to shoot on film because we wanted that grain and that texture. We kept speaking about these characters who are running out of time and we wondered how that would then translate by shooting the film on a medium that was also limited – how that would feed performance and how the look of that would aid in the storytelling. We were also specific with the locations that we picked in terms of colour. We wanted it to be quite dark and dreary, but at the same time, there was an element of colour and life that we wanted it to have. There are also Grace’s costumes. We wanted her to be really vibrant on the backdrop of something that felt quite dark and dreary. All those elements just came together to create the palette that it has, which in some ways, feels quite eclectic, but I like that.
While obviously not someone’s house, the care home doesn’t have a clinical feel to it.
We got very lucky, it’s actually a care home that had been shut down many years ago and the owners let us use it. All of the doors still had the names of the residents that were in them, which was quite a bit spooky and some of the wardrobes in the rooms still had clothing and hats but it worked perfectly.
This is such an impressive project as your NFTS graduate film. How was the experience of working with the school to create it?
Just before starting the NFTS, my aunt who has always been a second mother to me had been diagnosed with a brain tumour. The idea came from that moment and I knew in many ways that I wanted to do this for my grad film. I had been writing it intermittently throughout the two years I was there so that by the time it came around, I had the script ready. The development was therefore straightforward because whilst a lot of people have to start from scratch I had time to develop my script and go from there. The tutors at the NFTS supported the project from the very beginning through to the end. They knew where the story came from and various members of the crew and the team had also lost someone close to them to the same sort of illness so it felt like a passion project with everyone coming together to honour the people that we had lost. It was also so fun and so full of joy and laughter that I think it just created a really special atmosphere.
We kept speaking about these characters who are running out of time and we wondered how that would then translate by shooting the film on a medium that was also limited.
Jellyfish & Lobster has achieved amazing success so far with multiple festival screenings and now your BAFTA nomination, how does that feel?
I think you always hope that what you create will be embraced, but you obviously never really know. This particularly felt so wonderful and honest for me as it’s one of the most honest pieces of work I’ve ever made so there was this huge fear that came with that. Even at the NFTS Graduate Showcase, I was just sat there terrified but when you hear the audience’s reaction I honestly can’t describe what that feeling is like. Then going around various festivals and seeing it in real time with audiences has just been incredible.
Have there been any parts of the film that people have laughed at or reacted to that have surprised you?
Yeah, the one bit that has happened a few times is Grace asks, “Do you think I could go in and stay under?” Mido replies, “Yeah, but I think you’ll be drowning”. I never wrote that intending it to be a punchline yet, for some reason, a lot of people laugh. I think because through the tone we have set from the very beginning of the film, we give the audience permission to laugh at moments that they probably aren’t used to being given permission to laugh at. It’s meant to be quite a dark moment but I’ll take it!
So what’s next?
Ideally, the dream would be to do a feature. For now, I have a few things at the treatment stage and developing a few things here and there so we’ll see what comes of it.
