Interviews // Mdhamiri á Nkemi (Original Skin)

Harmony Witte: Congratulations on Original Skin being selected to screen at Tribeca Film Festival!

Mdhamiri á Nkemi: Thank you so much. Thank you.

Harmony Witte: I looked you up, and it seems like you’ve received a lot of really impressive accolades. How did you end up as a director and editor?

Mdhamiri á Nkemi: Thank you so much. It was a kind of interesting journey in that I grew up outside of film, so I sort of discovered film on my own and tried to teach myself everything about it, but not having any support, really. It was kind of me learning every role, including editing, and directing and also some very bad acting a long time ago. I kept pursuing that and realized that directing, editing are things I’m really excited about. I really enjoy storytelling and want to keep doing that as long as possible by also collaborating with people. And I feel like both as an editor and director, you really get the opportunity to do that.

Harmony Witte: So, there’s so many layers in this film, like LGBTQ issues, race issues, issues around cults and virginity. Was it difficult to balance them all?

Mdhamiri á Nkemi: Yes! I think there’s a really complex thing and amazing thing about this world we’ve invented is that it gets very complicated very quickly. All aspects of society are sort of intertwined in it and change. If you’re in this world where your literary shopping bodies constantly, gender is a different thing, race is a different thing. And so, there was a lot of work trying to set up backstory in what the context of the world is and then realizing that you can’t fit it into a twelve-minute short film. A lot of the development journey was about distilling all of those ideas and trying to find the key essence of it. What is the core of the thing that we want to communicate in a short film that works as a short film also teases a potential future?

Harmony Witte: Okay, so I was actually in a cult situation when I was young, and they used to send us out into the world to proselytize the people every so often, and we would always end up with a couple of people who were taken over by “temptation”. This made me think of that, and it also made me think of the Amish practice of Rumspringa, where the Amish youth go out and experience the world as a rite of passage. Do you know what inspired the high-control group aspect of the story?

Mdhamiri á Nkemi: Yeah, it was to basically try and find a way to show the contrast between the world that the main character wants to go into the sort of free flowing, fluid rest of the world, and then to sort of try and find a way to externalize the internal conflict that’s going on inside her because she feels separate from that. And this guilt and shame of wanting to be part of it, but also getting this suppression. And so, as a way of fully articulating that in the film, we felt like we needed this group essentially, to be the classic, very traditional family who are very against what the young kids are doing. It’s a way of heightening that and putting that into a genre format.

Harmony Witte: Have you submitted to other festivals as well?

Mdhamiri á Nkemi: Yeah, we have actually. I feel like we’re doing Quebec backwards. I feel like most people can go there as their world premiere, but we actually, we’ve had a really, thankfully, a really great festival run already so far over the last year. And got to travel with it and show it to a lot of different people and different cultures and stuff, which has been really interesting. But, yeah, Tribeca Film Festival is the New York premiere.

Harmony Witte: Okay, so what do you hope people take away from this short film?

Mdhamiri á Nkemi: I think I kind of really wanted to make a film that explores the constructs of identity, but in a way that felt very contemporary and talks about the world we live in now. It sort of follows the tropes of a coming-of-age film, but instead of that ending up with a character working out who they are, it’s a character who works out that they don’t have to define who they are. Identity isn’t a fixed thing, and it can constantly evolve and change throughout your life. I think that’s all the really key thing that I wanted to have this to take away at the end of the film.

Harmony Witte: I ask all creatives this when I’m doing interviews, because I have a theory that I’m working on that most people who are creative, it seems like, suffer from some degree of imposter syndrome. Do you have that, or does confidence in your work come naturally?

Mdhamiri á Nkemi: No, definitely not naturally. I am hugely suffering from impostor syndrome every day. I think especially since I still work full time as an editor. So then going into directing for me was like, let’s see if I can do this. Let’s see if I can make this work. And I want to expand this into a feature and other features I’m developing as well. But, yeah, every day it’s like that. Am I actually? Am I actually a director? I guess I have a film. It exists. So officially, on paper I am, but yes, definitely.

Harmony Witte: Are there any upcoming projects that you’re working on?

Mdhamiri á Nkemi: Yeah, so the main one is the feature version of Original Skin that we’re working with the same team, Sabina the producer, and I love the amazing writer, Eve had a return there where we put together an outline at the moment. And then, yeah, hopefully trying to get development money. And then there’s another feature that I am working on as a writer and director that we’ve been developing for the last couple of years, and now we’re trying to move it to the next level. It’s also kind of genre film, Sci-Fi also, in a way, talking about identity.

Harmony Witte: Is that your theme that you like to stick to?

Mdhamiri á Nkemi: I think so. I think I’m discovering that. I mean, I think I really like Sci-Fi, but, like, not so much like spaceships and aliens, but more using Sci-Fi as a way to talk about the human mind and how we interact with people in society. I think if I didn’t go into film, I would have ended up in psychology in some form because the way we represent as people and perceive each other and all that, I think, is really rich.

Harmony Witte: I was on your twitter, and you repost a lot of tweets about the dire situations in Sudan, Congo, and Gaza. Do you put a lot of thought into using your platform to draw attention to these causes?

Mdhamiri á Nkemi: Yeah, definitely. I think it’s important as artists to do that. I think film as a medium is incredibly powerful, and it’s incredibly useful tool to be able to allow people to see other perspectives that they might not otherwise have even thought of or considered and raise awareness for things that sometimes get slipped under the radar. I think we all have responsibility as people to put a lot of effort into that, to make sure our work speaks to that.