/ Don't hate the media, become the media.Jello Biafra

When Ayaan becomes a temporary caregiver for his grandmother, they find themselves adrift in the gulf of a language barrier. In the silence, spectres of a colonial past shift how he sees strangers and himself.

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Hi Shehrezad, thank you for taking the time to talk with us. I wanted to start by asking how The Curfew come about, what inspired your screenplay?

One of the earlier inspirations was a photo taken in Amritsar, India, in 1919, of an Indian man crawling at the feet of three British soldiers. Before writing the script, I was reflecting on what it meant to grow up in a postcolonial society in Pakistan, where white people were no longer really present, yet the indoctrination of the imperial project still shaped how we saw ourselves—through shame, self-doubt, and a deference to whiteness. Coming to the US and encountering white culture directly for the first time, I felt a disorienting sense of déjà vu: that same conditioning from home transplanted itself with suspicious ease into the completely different context of America. I was struck by the familiarity with which people around me adapted to—or even anticipated—that conditioning. 

I became interested in exploring how we carry colonial legacies in our bodies long after leaving our home countries, and how our self-perception and biases get absorbed into a different racist system and are transmitted through generations. Through the framework of a Pakistani grandmother and American grandson who struggle to connect, “The Curfew” became an exploration of some of these rifts and frictions.

Did you have any apprehensions about writing a screenplay that comes from such a personal place?

The film is personal but not autobiographical or confessional, and while neither approach makes me apprehensive, I find an autobiographical approach less exciting as a writer. I started from a place of imagining characters whose lives are informed by my own experiences or by people I know—being specific enough to make the details feel lived-in, while still conjuring whole characters and experiences I’ve never lived. 

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Do you allow your cast some flexibility with the text once you start shooting or do you like to stick to the script as is?

Since this was my first narrative film, and I had the privilege of working with very experienced theatre and film actors, I didn’t feel beholden to the lines I’d written months earlier in the isolation of my studio. I was open to improving lines in advance or sometimes improvising on set.

I’m more particular about how the silences and quieter non-dialogue moments play out. The choreography of how characters exist in a space, watch each other, avoid each other, and perform small rituals or everyday habits feels more fragile to me. Silence can often reveal more than dialogue, and that’s where I find myself focusing on my original intentions. In the noise and busyness of a set, I wanted to create a space for those subtler rhythms and gestures to surface.

"...silence can sometimes lead us into the heart of a film..."

You have a fantastic cast which includes the award-winning Balinder Johal. What was the experience like working with such an impressive cast?

 

To build on my previous answer, I was fascinated by how each actor inhabited silence differently—how they could distill an emotion through stillness. Balinder Johal can express so much through a single glance, or even through her breathing and nonverbal sounds, particularly in the final scene. Sathya Sridharan, as well as Rajesh Bose, can sometimes be still and convey almost everything with their eyes.

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Working with them gave me confidence to write more sparsely in my next project—to trust how much great actors can carry in moments stripped of big gestures and metaphors. As someone who isn’t drawn to the conflict-driven screenwriting model of heroes overcoming obstacles, this experience reaffirmed that quieter scenes aren’t just for breaking rhythm or catching our breath between the more significant scenes. If we flip the idea that big actions are the baseline and quieter scenes “need to be earned,” silence can sometimes lead us into the heart of a film, where the longing, vulnerability, or alienation of the characters is most deeply felt. 

 

And finally, what would you like your audiences to take away from The Curfew?

 

A renewed sensitivity to the mysteries and fragility of human connection, how the most fleeting encounters can carry the residue of other lives and times, and how our ancestors’ lives can reverberate in our bodies and quietly shape the ways we come to know ourselves.