‘All Of Us Strangers’ director reveals unusual reason why new gay drama is so personal to him

The British director Andrew Haigh has been speaking out on his personal connection to his latest movie.

All Of Us Strangers stars Andrew Scott as a gay screenwriter “who, after an encounter with his neighbor (Paul Mescal), is pulled back to his childhood home where he discovers that his long-dead parents (Jamie Bell and Claire Foy) are living and look the same age as the day they died.”

In the story, the parents die in their 30s, while Scott’s character is still a child.

The trailer makes it clear it’s quite an original tale, mixing passion, romance and ghostly fantasy.

Haigh has now spoken about what inspired him to make the movie, and why it’s so personal to him. He reveals that he shot the film in his own childhood home. He says he went looking for the house he lived in up until the age of 7 or 8.

Haigh knocked on the door and spoke to the current homeowner.

“The owner agreed to let us film there,” Haigh says, reports Variety. “He hadn’t really decorated it in 30 years, so all these memories came flooding back. And then we used my old photos to make it look almost exactly as it had. It was so emotional for me, but it was also cathartic. It was a chance to re-approach my past.”

Haigh went on to say he could relate to Scott’s quest to explore his childhood relationship with his parents. Haigh’s parents are still alive but they divorced when he was a teenager, which had a big impact on his life.

“I can relate to what he’s feeling,” Haigh says. “The child in us is essentially always there and stuff that you carry around as a kid. You think you’ve grown out of it, but it can bubble over, affecting how we live.”

Coming out

Haigh also says the movie reflects on the different experiences gay men had coming out. When he was growing up in the 80s and 90s, AIDS dominated people’s perceptions of being gay and there were no high-profile gay couples.

“I wanted to remind myself and people who are watching what it was like back in that time,” Haigh says. “It was a very different experience to come out, so how the mother reacts in the film is exactly what everybody was thinking at that time. It was how we thought about ourselves. We worried we’d be lonely, and we wouldn’t find love.”

Haigh first came to attention with his debut movie, Weekend (2011). He went on to write and direct most of the cult queer series, Looking.

Watch Haigh and three of his leads talk about All Of Us Strangers in a new featurette below.

All Of Us Strangers is released in the US on December 22nd by Fox Searchlight.

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