For her breakthrough feature, 2019's Hala, Minhal Baig wrote what she knew: The Sundance drama tells the story of a Pakistani-American teenager caught between the spheres of her family life and private life — which collide when she discovers a family secret that could change everything.
"Hala was very much drawn from my life," says the filmmaker. "That process was amazing, and I wouldn't trade it for the world, but that really required me to look inward and what I was interested in for We Grown Now was telling a story that was larger than myself. It's about a place and a people that I think are not given their due."
Born and raised in Chicago, Baig has always been drawn to complicated coming-of-age stories — particularly those set in her hometown. We Grown Now centers on two young best friends growing up in Chicago's Cabrini-Green public housing project in the '90s. As intended, the story is far from autobiographical — "I'm not from the projects, I'm not Black, I'm not part of this community" — yet still, the film ended up being deeply personal to Baig. (We Grown Now won the Changemaker Award at last year's Toronto International Film Festival.)
"In a way, it allowed me to reflect on my own relationship to home, to my family, and to my father who had just passed when I had started to think about the movie, without literally representing that on-screen," she explains. "I think that's one of the joys of making a film like this — even though it's not where I come from, I found pieces of my childhood that ended up being a movie."
Below, Baig shares with A.frame five of her favorite films, including the underrated Darren Aronofsky masterpiece that she says taught her everything about life.
Directed by: Tarsem | Written by: Dan Gilroy, Nico Soultanakis and Tarsem
The Fall is an absolutely stunning gem of a movie. It's a story about the imagination, about a child dreaming up a story and it becoming "real." I could rewatch it all the time. It's just a visual feast of a movie. Every frame is such a gorgeous landscape of emotion.
Directed by: Paolo Sorrentino | Written by: Paolo Sorrentino and Umberto Contarello
It's one of the most beautiful films ever made. What I love about The Great Beauty is that it's exploring this crisis that happens as you get older and you start to realize that perhaps the things you've built your life on are not aligned with your values. This character is kind of reassessing what he's built his life on, and in a classic Sorrentino fashion, it's just stunning. It's just a visually stunning experience.
Written and Directed by: Andrea Arnold
I watched it a couple years ago on 35mm, and it was breathtaking how perfectly made this movie is. Robbie Ryan's cinematography is just exquisite. The way that Andrea Arnold explores the psychology of this young woman trying to find her place in the world and going about it all in the wrong ways is just amazing. That was a big reference for me in making Hala, too.
Written and Directed by: Darren Aronofsky
It's insane that The Fountain got made. It's about life, and death, and hope, and love. It's about everything, and it's all in one movie. You can watch The Fountain and you've learned all you need to know about life — you're done! It's my favorite film of Aronofsky's films.
Written and Directed by: Guillermo del Toro
Pan's Labyrinth is one of my favorite films of all time. It's also the kind of movie that feels, again, insane that it got made. What I love about it — and I think it sort of touches on what We Grown Now is about too — is the escapism that the imagination offers to children, especially to survive a difficult time, of being able to use the imagination and your own resourcefulness. It really speaks to children's resilience too.
