Andrew Haigh Will Wreck You

After you see his new film, All of Us Strangers, the writer-director expects you'll want to "think about some things"about yourself, about your relationships, about your family

- By Dave Holmes

"IT WAS NOT THE EASIEST day." This is how the British filmmaker Andrew Haigh sums up the experience of deciding whether to come out to his father, again. "My dad went through a decline into dementia as I was writing and making the film," he says of 2023's emotional gut punch All of Us Strangers. "He has a memory of me, but he asked me if I had a wife. I suddenly felt like I was young again, about to have to come out to my dad."

To raise the emotional stakes, this conversation happened the night before he was shooting a scene in which the film's not-exactly-autobiographical protagonist, Adam, comes out to his own not-exactlyautobiographical father. "The feelings were absolutely the same: What happens if he's going to be upset about it now? What am I going to feel like if he is upset about it?" You should also know that this suddenly just-aboutexactly-autobiographical fatherand-son scene, like much of the film, would be shot in Haigh's actual childhood home just outside Croydon, England. "I didn't even know how to comprehend it," he says. "I've got some version of my dad sitting in the chair where my dad used to sit, in this house where I used to live that I haven't been back to in 40 years, and I've just had this conversation with my dad." He sighs. "It was unusual, let's say."