Cinema Without Borders: Playing a part—In Camera

New Indian Express

23-04-2025

Naqqash Khalid's directorial debut,
In Camera
, might focus on the work life of a struggling British-Asian actor but kicks off with the angst and existential anxieties of a well-established name in the business. He is not inclined to play a 'two-dimensional' cop, doing the same thing every episode, in yet another season of a murder-mystery series that has otherwise earned him good money and the love of the people. 'But I will turn irrelevant in two years,' he tells his agent, desperate to do a film of consequence instead.
Absorbed in his own self, he also fails to acknowledge the greeting—nice working with you—of Aden (Nabhan Rizwan), the upcoming actor playing a corpse. Aden is himself in search of pertinence and purpose in life between attending acting workshops, auditions, taping sessions and photoshoots. He is caught in a cycle of public scrutiny and rejections while managing to do an odd bit part, such as this one, even wearing his own shirt to the set and, in return, told rather indifferently to submit a dry cleaning invoice to compensate for the soiled attire. There's something heedless, frosty and mechanical about the profession that is supposedly driven by heart, mind, and soul.
Khalid spotlights the film business in the UK with a visibly inventive, irreverent, and independent sensibility that eschews the conventional form and modes of narration. There's not much of a story or drama anyhow, more a slice of everyday life of Aden as he moves between his home and work. A surreal record of the misery in the mundane that plays with the collective fragmented realities and feverish imaginations. Khalid showcases things with a darkly humorous and deadpan touch—be it the staccato, measured conversations Aden has with his doctor flatmate Bo (Rory Fleck Byrne) who is fighting demons of his own or the matter-of-fact chat with the banker about the tenuous state of his account. The most caustic portrayal is of the auditions—exposing the prejudices, hypocrisies, cultural straitjacketing, lack of diversity and inclusivity as well as crass commercialisation rampant in the British film industry. There's one for a toothpaste ad where he gets picked up for being a regular guy, an everyman, because 'that's what the brand is all about'. All he must do is smile widely and show off his pearly white teeth.
'Smile. Say the words on the page. It's not so hard,' Aden tells his new fashion manager flatmate Conrad (Amir El-Masry) when he enquires about what it is like to be an actor. The irony is that it is not so simple and straightforward at all.
Rizwan brings out its complexities and nuances with urgency and empathy even as we see his Aden transform through the course of the film—from a stoic, straight-faced presence to an animated, assertive one. 'I am not a shadow,' he declares. Things reach a poignant point when he agrees to play a role in real life, one which helps him earn for a supposedly good cause—to help two distraught souls overcome loss and grief and heal themselves. But is it really that simple? There is also a confrontation with his own roots and belonging as he squares up with the West's highly coloured imagination of a hijacker from the Middle East and takes a ride with a cabbie who tells him that he wants to go back home and not be buried in alien soil. It brings the matters of identity politics to the forefront after having seemingly buried deep inside his consciousness.
Fittingly then we end up with him being successful but still not being acknowledged for himself. Even as Aden is referred to as the brown version of a star, a new brown actor tells Aden that it was nice working with him. Perfect way to bookend a film that is essentially the loop of struggle, arrival, success and persistence of chauvinism.