In Anu Valia’s directorial debut “We Strangers,” the audience is faced with a hypothetical: “What would you do if one lie flipped your whole life upside down?” The film drops viewers into the life of contract cleaner Ray (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), who lives in Gary, Indiana. She’s hired by therapist Dr. Neeraj Patel (Hari Dhillon) to clean both his house and that of his mistress, Jean (Maria Dizzia.) Bored by the mundanity of mops and brooms, she follows an intrusive thought and tells Jean a lie: that she can see ghosts. This fib begins a chain reaction that has Ray in a new position of power over her employers.
Ahead of the film’s premiere at the South By Southwest Film Festival, Valia and Kirby spoke with Character Media about the project!
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Character Media: Anu, you’ve directed short films, television series and now your first feature. How have your experiences in these different mediums affected the way you approached this film?
Anu Valia: When you’re making any story, nothing else matters. You’re just thinking about the story you want to tell. The other work I’ve done has, of course, informed my craft, [and] there’s things I picked up along the way, but I just wanted to tell this story.
I also specifically wanted to do it with Kirby and the other actors. Other people might be able to draw some comparisons, but to me, this was the first time I’ve ever been able to tell a long-form story in the way I see the world with my other collaborators.
CM: Speaking of collaborators, Kirby, what originally drew you into the project and to playing Ray?
Kirby Howell-Baptiste: What drew me to the project was Anu wrote a script, even in its early iterations, that shone a light on the lead being someone who is a commercial cleaner. But, in the real world, [this group] occupies a space where they are…
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