From Spielberg to Brakhage: 5 influences on the sci-fi-tinged drama Sky Peals

Throughout life, many adults experience some degree of alienation from their environment or ostensible loved ones. It can be brief or long-lasting, but it’s a universal experience even if the specifics will always vary. Less common is that alienation leading us to believe that we may actually be an alien.

In Moin Hussain’s unconventional sci-fi drama Sky Peals, which the British writer-director determinedly shot on 35mm film, one man seems to receive enough signs to deduce that he is connected to another world. Soft-spoken Adam (Faraz Ayub) works night-shifts in the kitchen of a burger takeaway at a service station, which suits him fine as it means minimal interaction with other people – he’s a young man who doesn’t feel like he fits in. A change of management upends his routine, as does his family home, where he lives alone, being sold on by his mother, Donna (Claire Rushbrook).


Adam’s father, Hassan (Jeff Mirza), left under vague circumstances years ago. But during a surprise phone call one night, he invites his son to meet in order to convey important information. Adam does not oblige, and a few days later he learns that Hassan has been found dead nearby. While trying to piece together a picture of his estranged father from remnants left behind, Adam begins having blackouts and sensorial episodes that seem like otherworldly transmissions. What if Hassan’s belief that he was from beyond the stars had some validity? What does that make his son?



In festival reviews of Sky Peals, some writers have discussed the film as representing the experiences of many neurodivergent people, navigating isolation and confusing social contact. “I don’t like saying this is what is going on with this character and that this is the one reading of the film,” Hussain tells me. “That can be limiting for other people. But I’ve heard a lot of people talk about that [interpretation], and I think it’s perfectly plausible. Adam isn’t a character who has any awareness of any neurodivergence, but he definitely feels that, for some reason, he doesn’t belong within the world that he’s in. He feels like he experiences the world differently. That’s definitely there.”



Here are a few of the earthbound sources that inspired Hussain’s ambiguous debut feature.



Hussain: There are a lot of Wim Wenders films that were living in my mind, especially his road movies. You have these alienated, lonely people who are living in a transitory space, so there was that aspect. And visually, I love the way he frames faces with the straight down-the-line portraits; he’s massively inspired by [Yasujiro] Ozu, as am I. Wenders’ Kings of the Road (1976) is a beautiful film for that, and Paris, Texas (1984).

There was one service station that I really wanted to shoot in that nearly let us shoot there. We didn’t, but it was for the best, because while it had an amazing exterior, the reality of trying to have control of that space, to [shape] it into what we needed it to be, would have been a nightmare. So we concocted a collection of locations. 

The way I remember service stations in my brain is not how service stations are. It’s the way a space feels, and it’s tapping into some weird part of your brain, so when you actually go and view service stations, it’s like, “No, this isn’t actually like a spaceship at all. I’ve projected onto that.” The interior is mostly a shopping centre and a disused sports centre. We shot the exterior of a real motorway service station bridge.


Hussain: An undeniable influence was Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Like all the best Spielberg films, it has this simple, very emotionally potent, mythic quality. He does it beautifully in that film, but what really intrigued me about it was this man who abandons his family to go up into the stars with the aliens. Thinking about what happened to that family he left behind… What’s the story with this kid in 30 years? That spoke to a lot of ideas I was interested in and things I wanted to explore. There are a lot of stories from my own life, my family, that there are echoes of in [Sky Peals]. There’s a photograph of my granddad in the film actually. Then there is stuff that is completely fictional.

Hussain: She is a minimalist electronic composer who’s been working since the 1960s. I listened to her work as I wrote [Sky Peals], and it really informed the score and sound design. She does these amazing, long drone compositions, which are slow moving but have this very transcendental effect. It was through listening to her music that I came across Sarah Davachi, who was our composer, who is massively inspired by her. With the score, it started in something mundane transforming into something celestial and otherworldly. 

Paul Davies is our amazing sound designer who also worked on one of the films on my Sight and Sound list, Morvern Callar (2002). We tried a lot of experimentation in the more abstract sequences, but outside of those scenes as well, it’s a very subjective film. Making the audience see the world the way Adam experiences it was really important.

Hussain: He was an experimental filmmaker who made these amazing, mostly very short shorts, where there was something so cosmic and otherworldly about them. [They came to mind] when I was thinking about these experiences that Adam’s having; these bursts of contact or a portal to another place that he’s seeing and reaching for. [Brakhage’s] work just feels so alive. He would get celluloid and bake it, paint on it, carve it. And then it feels so amazing. It has a life to it that is impossible to replicate. 

We didn’t quite go as far as that, but we were experimenting pretty early in my back garden. With all the crazy digital advances, nobody’s come close to giving you a portal to another place, as he did. I’m just one of those people who loves film and it’s as simple as that. There is some stuff I watch now that I think is on film that isn’t on film. But I feel like if budget allowed, why have to put yourself through the gamble of it not looking like film when you can just shoot on film. 

While there are stresses that come with it, the clarifying energy and focus that it brings to everyone on set, and the sound that camera makes, it’s just something else. The look of [Sky Peals] always needed to feel grounded and tangible but also lend itself to the more heightened, abstract genre aspects of the film as well. It was just a no-brainer to shoot on 35mm.

Hussain: Todd Haynes’ [Safe] also has this thing of a character slipping deeper into this worldview where they think they’ve found a solution to their problems – in that film, it’s an environment that [Julianne Moore’s character] is finding toxic. Is she hurtling towards her own destruction? Or is she finding safety, and is she escaping? There are so many ways you can read that entire film in terms of what it’s about. But with the final scene alone, you can go into it and read it as a dark, horrible, sad scene, or as something completely uplifting.

Sky Peals is in cinemas from 9 August and on BFI Player from 23 September.