Written and directed by Naqqash Khalid, a young man spends most of his time recording self-tapes for parts he never gets. After multiple rejections for a series of nightmarish commercial auditions, he takes it upon himself to find a new part to play. Starring: Nabhaan Rizwan, Amir El-Masry, Rory Fleck Byrne, Josie Walker and Antonio Aakeel.
Naqqash Khalid immediately dives right into that air of disillusionment, you can sense how unseen and pigeonholed Aden (Nabhaan Rizwan) feels and how it has destroyed his hope. It’s nicely harsh in tone yet realistic in action portrayal of a difficult industry. Especially when Khalid brings a very offbeat style, which is matched by Rizwan’s exceptionally introverted and curiously closed-off performance. Those two elements create something almost along the lines of Lanthimos, strange and with an intriguing coldness.
A lot of its peculiar atmosphere comes from Nabhaan Rizwan’s performance, it’s fascinating to see him create such a unique character, who’s so plagued by being stereotyped. He makes it hard for the audience to truly get to know him, trying to unpack his personality, as well as his mental issues, is not easy work and that’s quite refreshing to see. He’s also got an excellent supporting cast behind him, Amir El-Masry in particular is an underrated talent of British film and television. He gives another example here of his strong presence onscreen and there’s a puzzling edge to his character which is really interesting to watch.
There’s also a surprising amount of screentime given to Rory Fleck Byrne’s Bo, a character who has a sincere brokenness. It’s a nice parallel to Aden’s experiences, to show how being a doctor is beating him down, draining him of energy and starting to lose his grip on reality. However, In Camera definitely also loses its grip as time goes on, that offbeat tone turns into something chaotic and risky.
You have to respect Khalid for the swings he takes here, especially for a debut feature and stylistically they’re great, the aesthetic and direction is consistently sharp. Thematically though, it feels like things just got away from him and he wasn’t quite able to bring everything back together to finish strong. It’s throwing a lot at the audience in its final scenes and while it technically makes sense for the characters, the flow and progression just don’t feel very natural.
In Camera is a fascinating debut feature from Naqqash Khalid with a strongly unique style but it takes some big risks in its latter half that don’t really pay off. The story explores interesting territory, particularly in that it delves deeply into men’s mental health. It’s rare to see any mention of men having eating issues at all so it’s great to see it in the conversation here. Nabhaan Rizwan leads the way with a delightfully strange and unusual performance. There’s a great deal of tension all throughout the film and the direction has a lot of sharp style.
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