After the Heartbreak of ‘Blade,’ ‘Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’ Director Bassam Tariq Still Thanks Marvel for Helping Him ‘Think Big’

TIFF: The filmmaker tells IndieWire how (and why) he re-teamed with star Mahershala Ali after they both exited "Blade," and how that experience influenced his latest feature, already picking up lots of buzz on the festival circuit.

“You only live once,” filmmaker Bassam Tariq told IndieWire during a recent Zoom, alluding to the sentiment behind his departure from “Blade,” a Marvel Cinematic Universe film with two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali as the titular vampire hunter that never came to pass.

Though the director said his decision to walk away from the project about the world’s most famous daywalker was “difficult,” out of its ashes came enough of a relationship with Ali to finally pitch him on “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother,” a script Tariq had been working on for years. He always had Ali in mind to star at Latif, a Muslim hitman struck by a sudden loss, desperate to now find a way to feed his youngest child. 

“We saw the intersections of how we desire to operate and aspire to operate in the world, and I found a real kinship to him and a real connection,” said the director. “It felt like we started something and it was the one that got away. And there were a lot of other folks that I was considering but then I just felt like I got to go back to him because it just felt so right.”

That doesn’t mean he didn’t take some convincing to approach Ali, who he had only ever previously talked to about their Marvel project. “‘Blade’ was so full-on and it’s also inappropriate because we’re in a project where we want to give everything as much as we can. It was a very dedicated 100,000 percent conversation on that,” he said of his previous interactions with the star. But “the community around us, the Muslim community of artists have been so central in this. Ramy [Youssef] was like, ‘You gotta reach out to him.’ Riz [Ahmed] was like, ‘You need to reach out to him.’” 

Finally taking that leap of getting back in touch with Ali, overcoming the fear of his top choice to star in the film not liking the material, provided another lesson to Tariq as a filmmaker. “In any creative endeavor, you have to allow yourself to be completely unsafe and allow for the deaths that are going to come along the way of your ego,” said the director.

The first kernel of the idea for “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” came from Tariq’s wife going through a health scare after their first child was born, but it was his pandemic experience that really made him confront the balance between his career aspirations and being a father. “I had made a film called ‘Mogul Mowgli’ and it premiered at Berlin and it had a good moment. Everyone was like, ‘Oh, get ready. It’s going to be a wild ride.’ And the world was shut down,” said Tariq. “I was like, ‘Oh man, I spent all this time hoping that something would come,’ and then nothing came because it’s just the reality of how everything was shutting down. And so then I was forced to deal with my kids and myself and relationships that I was ignoring for a while.”

The decision not to direct “Blade,” a film that was on track to be a major milestone not just for him, but for those aspiring directors who share his background as a Pakistani-American Muslim who grew up working class, was the final piece of perspective that helped him figure out everything he wanted to say with “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother,’ which will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday, September 12.

“I don’t want to be all woe is me about this stuff, but there’s always this feeling of I let my community down,” said Tariq. He cites Bradford Young’s episode of the Team Deakins podcast, where the “Solo” cinematographer discussed the burden of being the first Black cinematographer to work on a “Star Wars” film. “He felt this pressure and he asked his friends, ‘Will you still love me if this doesn’t work?’ And I remember I was listening down in the car and I had to pull over and I just started crying because it’s really this question that you have.”

“Blade” still became a positive experience for Tariq, because it is what moved his family to Atlanta, allowing him time to spend more time with his children. And his departure from the project again led to him finally figuring out what he wanted “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” to be. “That’s what so much of this film is dealing with, you thought your journey was one thing but it’s actually another,” said the filmmaker. “The way I’ve tried to explain the film is it’s almost like a samurai film about a man that has to kill all the versions of himself to be the father that’s necessary for his children. That’s the way I’ve been seeing this film more and more as I’ve been sitting with it now.”

Looking back on his experience working with Marvel, “the big takeaway that I got from them was really the ability to think big,” said Tariq. Having attended the premieres of MCU projects like “Eternals” and “Ms. Marvel,” “I would see how inspired and how connected the audience were. And I was like, ‘You know what? They really do care about the audience.’ Kevin [Feige] is listening, they’re adapting and they’re changing and it’s exciting to see. That’s something that I feel like as an indie filmmaker, I want to be doing more of. Not to say that I want to make a film by committee, I feel like that’s disastrous for art.”

Prior to “Mogul Mowgli,” Tariq had primarily directed unscripted projects. “Particularly because I come from documentaries, you have to listen. And in a way, as you listen to the world and how it informs what it is, it’s how long do I really need to linger on this shot?,” he said. “That’s something that we’re all learning because, at the end of the day, I think we make films because we want to connect with larger groups of people. Otherwise, if I just wanted to connect with 10 people in an academic circle, I’d go make video art, which is fine. I love video art. I go and consume video art, but I have a strong desire to reach.”

He added, “I want to make things that are artful and accessible, those are the things that I think I’m aspiring to. And you never know if you’re going to really hit the mark or not.”

If there was ever a time to take a big swing, eschewing IP in favor of an original idea, this summer seems to be it. “Now as I’m seeing younger people going to theaters, they want things with stakes, they want things with humanity, they want things that feel lived in. I think the reason why people also love horror is because you don’t know who’s going to live or not, the stakes actually feel more interesting,” said Tariq. “It’s not just, ‘Oh, I’m being jumpscared.’ No, you’re going in for a communal experience and you don’t know who’s going to come out alive.”

To see the positive response to even the announcement of “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother,” with Black and/or Muslim audiences being inspired by just the logline, was a gratifying experience for the director. “That’s what’s exciting to me right now is ownership in filmmaking,” said Tariq. “At this point, it’s not mine anymore, it’s now the audience’s. TIFF is my giving away of the film. And I think at that moment, I will try to write a letter to the film and say thank you for this time and this experience.”

After “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” premieres at Toronto and hits theaters on September 25, the director is thinking about taking inspiration from New York for his next film. “I’m reinvigorated by the city again in a way with a lot of the community that’s here. And it feels like there is something happening here,” said the director. “It’s always been a dream to make a film in New York City, so let’s see.” (He even joked, “We should go make the biopic on Zohran [Mamdani].”)

As for whether he would ever take another project the scale of “Blade” into consideration, Tariq said, “When you do work on your own terms, it’s really exciting. I’m always open to opportunities. I’m always honored when I’m ever invited into a room. It was such an honor of my life to have been in those spaces to learn from so many people at Marvel. But what it gave me was such a gift: it allowed me to then make this incredible film.”

“Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” will premiere at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival. Amazon MGM Studios will release it in theaters on Friday, September 25.