1 June 18:20 | Odeon Luxe West End 

Feeling detached from the world around him, service station worker Adam receives devastating news about his estranged father, while uncovering mysteries of who that man really was. 

“Do you ever feel that you’re in the wrong place? Like, if this is the place you were meant to end up?” asks an existential Adam Muhammed (Faraz Ayub) in Moin Hussain’s intriguing and lugubrious debut feature, Sky Peals. Having premiered as a Venice International Critics’ Week selection, Hussein’s sci-fi probes deep into identity, displacement, and grief. 

The film is told through Adam’s bewildered state, a shy and quiet mixed-race man born to a white English mother, Donna (Claire Rushbrook) and Pakistani father, Hassan (Jeff Mirza). Adam works the night shift at a burger joint in Sky Peals Services, a service station, where its harsh fluorescent lights and empty space don’t exactly alleviate the eerie limbo enveloping the town. One night, Adam’s lonely routine is disrupted when he receives a voicemail from his estranged father. But before the shock can begin to settle in, he receives another call a few days later revealing some devastating news. 

As Adam grapples with the sudden loss, it catalyses his desire to figure out the absurd mystery behind his father. But the more Adam searches for answers about him, he becomes increasingly haunted by strange occurrences – from experiencing unexplained bouts of amnesia to eerie encounters with ghostly figures. 

Nick Cooke’s cinematography expertly captures the disorienting atmosphere of a film that questions the nature of existence in a world filled with uncertainty and ambiguity. It is resonant, then, that Hussain’s script evolved during the COVID lockdown. He explains, “There are links in the film to that sort of isolation. It was in there before but it felt apt that I was writing in that time.”

Moin Hussain | 91 mins | United Kingdom

This screening will be followed by a Q&A with actor Faraz Ayub