‘The Man in My Basement’ director breaks silence ahead of film drop

When the psychological thriller The Man in My Basement, starring Willem Dafoe and Corey Hawkins, hits theatres on Friday, director Nadia Latif hopes the audience will leave questioning who has written history.

“I want people to be thinking about who tells them stories … and actually to do their own kind of investigation into what they believe their place in the world to be,” Latif told Reuters following the film’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The movie, which is Latif’s feature directorial debut and an adaptation of a Walter Mosley novel of the same name, follows the story of a young Black man whose life is on the brink of crumbling. He is about to lose his family’s home when a stranger knocks on his door with a bizarre request — to rent his basement for a hefty sum.

Dafoe, who plays the mysterious tenant, said it did not take much thinking after he read the script to know he wanted to be a part of the film.

“I liked the story and I liked how it’s able to discuss certain things that are in the air of concern to me,” he told Reuters.

“Once (Latif and I) started talking, I realized I was deficient in some of my knowledge of some of the things that are talked about in the film, and I needed to be educated … and she was great at that.”

Throughout the film, Dafoe and Hawkins’ characters face off in a series of tense monologues, all set in the dingy basement, that confront themes of race, privilege, and history.

“I hope that people do feel unsettled by it. I think there’s some really kind of big, ugly things that are discussed within the film,” Latif said.