Guidance director Neysan Sobhani has the must-see Black Mirror-vibes movie right now
If you’re struggling to get your movie goals in order, look no further the filmmaker Neysan Sobhani’s must-see Guidance flick - set to officially arrive in theaters and on-demand Friday, June 17. The perfect mix of romance quickly turns into a nerve-racking and wild twist of tech-filled shockers. Imagine Alfred Hitchcock style meets ‘Black Mirror,’ Limitless, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and oh yeah, Spike Jonze’s Her.
Visually stunning and with a storyline which burns slowly and rewards you every step of the way, Guidance is the perfect flick for moviegoers wanting a truly cinematic and meditative journey from start through 90-minute finish. Filmmaker and director Neysan Sobhani managed to make time for a super appreciated conversation on Asian subtitle films becoming a cult classic in the West, his excitement and slight nervousness about June 17 finally arriving plus possible plans for even bigger things to happen once Guidance reaches the masses.
As always, check out some of the highlights from the conversation and keep scrolling to get the full chop up session.
How excited are you about June 17? Has it been a countdown to this moment?
Neysan Sobhani: Um, it has, you know, actually I'm trying not to think of it too much. I don't want to get too, I don't wanna think about it but I'm really excited for more than you can imagine for people [to see it] and to be able to release your baby, you know out to the world is terrifying, but also very exciting and same time. But I'm super excited to see what's going to happen. It'll be interesting to see how so called Western audiences react to the film.
I kind of had this question for a little bit later in our conversation, but I'm going to bring it up now with the success of a ‘Squid Game’ and with Parasite. And seeing not just cultural success but literally at the Academy Awards. Does that at all boost your confidence, because I will tell you, Neysan, I’ve had a lot of friends that have never like even during the Crouching Tiger days, they hated subtitles. They did not want to embrace it. Now the culture has changed. People embrace it, international film gets so much love and appreciates it. Does that kind of change up your confidence and what is your take on that?
Neysan Sobahni: Absolutely. And a lot of that happened in just the past few years, as you say, as you know, we as we started writing this thing and then with our co-writers, you know, just developing it. And as we're doing this, I'm realizing what position we're in. And then it's going to be a subtitled film. And then we go into shooting and then we start seeing Parasite and we started seeing all the other you know, Korean films and, and many other films kind of getting out there and people getting over there as I think the director mentioned the Parasite getting over your fear of that one inch on the screen.
That was very exhilarating. I mean, I remember some of the long term investors messaged me and said, you know, this is great, it's gonna be great for us. You understand, like, people are changing. People are getting comfortable to exactly as you said, and I thought, again, I don't want to get too excited. I said, Yeah, okay, let's see. Let's see what happens.
It's funny because when I was explaining this to a couple of colleagues and a few friends of mine, I was like, like I mentioned, the Limitless pill meets Black Mirror meets Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. All those vibes so of course, it's not just you but a few other people behind the scenes, but really just the creation of this concept, man because we'll dig a little bit deeper into the actual plot, but more so just this concept of coming together.
Neysan Sobhani: Yeah, I mean, the idea of having something within us that would just talk to you and guide you, as to what you should do in any given scenario. And also, I thought, you know what, let's make it more interesting, more cinematic, something that would actually tell you if someone else is being dodgy or deceitful or whatever the case may be. That's been just jumping around my head for a long, long time seven, eight years and I started writing a script. It kind of turned out to be very expensive, big budget, hard sci fi screenplay.
And this idea was inside there as one of the elements and so but then I thought that this really deserves its own vehicle so took that out of that particular story and made this its own story. And it's all because I think this deserves its own its own treatment. And I really wanted to just drill down because it was a contained drama. You know, it's not that many locations not that many actors want to drill down to really some small, deceptively simple issues, in relationships and kind of human nature, but using this as the entry point. Yeah.
So let me also ask you about the actual, like the timeline and the sequence because that's something that's a little bit difficult to get correct right where you you go forward but then you go back and there's a lot of important things there. There's also the Great War discussion. Did you embrace the challenge because like I said, time sequences can be a tricky thing in films.
Neysan Sobhani: It is tricky. You know, it just requires a little bit and this is the bit that I don't know if it's gonna work out, but it needs and obviously you have the patience to kind of as you sit through it, it comes together. It's kind of, I kind of call it more Hitchcockian a kind of, you gotta do you got to sit through a little bit and then it'll start making sense the puzzle starts coming together.
It's meant to be kind of like a mystery piece as well. But here's one, one potentially simple way to keep track of things. So we have aspect ratio changing. So you got the 4:3 aspect ratio that usually is happening in the current. If you see that that's in the current timeline, when we switched to the 2:3:9 aspect ratio, that's usually the past so that's what I tried to do to give people you know, to help them out a little bit.
What does success mean for you in this particular film and because it's easy to say, ‘Oh, how many streams or how many views did we get?’ But you know, there's also the cultural impact, right, contributing to the movie making film culture. So just for you personally, and maybe professionally, just how do you view success with this particular project, even getting it out to the masses because we know films get shelved as well.
Neysan Sobhani: The biggest success is that made a film. I hate to sound like, you know, how often can you do that? You know, I mean, it's not easy. And you gotta be a little crazy to get into it. You honestly got to actually be a lot crazy to get into it because most instances, you know, do it for you. Don't do it for financial benefit. I mean, I could have put all this money into Apple or Microsoft five years ago and I would have quadrupled my money. So why am I doing this for you know - and no, I don’t own Apple, Microsoft just want to make sure, what’s it called? Disclosure.
The other thing is that it'd be wonderful to be able to continue. You know, you make a film so you're able to make more. Really, yeah. And that's for all it comes down to and just work on your craft more. Just keep working at it. Keep working. It's a craft, you know, and you just gotta keep the more you do it. Hopefully the better you become and you know, I'm always trying to be in learning mode.
And in all aspects, and that's that's what I love about it. I love storytelling. I think of myself first as a storyteller. Filmmaker second, but you know, so I've tried to create in the past two years, I've been working on a series that's based in the same universe as this film. Where because I feel like the concept that we got in here the NIS pill. That's just one application. You can have 1000s this just like on your phone, you can have hundreds of 1000s of apps that do stuff on your phone.
Same thing with this, imagine your phone is inside, you know, but Guidance in itself, you know, so I've been working the past couple of years and starting to just now go out and start pitching it and looking you know, somewhat positive. An eight episode series on this same - in the same universe.
Check out the full chop up session with Neysan Sobhani below.
