By George & Josh Bate
It only takes a brief look at the news to get a glimpse of the tribulations facing immigrants in modern America. ICE raids, threats of deportation, widespread anti-immigrant sentiment, macro- and micro-aggressions are just some of the many topics all too relevant to many people in the U.S. right now. In the new film If You See Something, director Oday Rasheed and star/co-writer Jess Jacobs capture the anxieties and troubles of immigrants with disturbing relevance through the lens of powerful drama and romance.
If You See Something stars Adam Bakri and Jess Jacobs as Ali and Katie respectively. Ali is an Iraqi doctor seeking asylum in the U.S. after completing medical school and coming close to the violence that plagues his home country. After striking up a romance with New York native Katie, Ali receives word that Dawod (Haddi Tabbal), his dear friend from Baghdad, has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom. The kidnapping tests the limits of Ali and Katie’s relationship and sees Ali reckon with the traumas of his past.
The HoloFiles recently had the opportunity to interview director Oday Rasheed and star/co-writer Jess Jacobs about their new film in a conversation that touches on the timeliness of their story, scrapped plans to originally make a thriller with this story, how they accurately depicted the anxieties immigrants face, and more.
Touching on a myriad of disturbingly relevant issues, If You See Something seems like it was filmed yesterday. “I agree that it’s relevant for what’s going on right now in these times,” director Rasheed said. Co-writer and star Jess Jacobs elaborated, “I think there’s a really important, beautiful conversation to have around immigration in any nation, but especially in the United States, which is a country built of immigrants….Of course, the moment we’re in politically and, frankly, globally, there’s such a global conversation to be had around migration. And it makes the politics of the film feel more central.”
For Rasheed, the film reflects his own experiences of migrating to the U.S. and starting a new life. “It’s partially based on my own experience when it comes to how I lived, how I decided to build a life here and what kind of person I was, and how that can be easily disturbed from what I left behind,” Rasheed remarked. “I immigrated in 2012. I started my life in New York City. I lived there for 10 years. I and I made my first English-speaking movie. So, I’m kind of living, like the film in a way, the American Dream, or the premise of the American Dream. Having said that, that doesn’t that there was no big price to pay or still paying.”
Despite the high-stakes and intensity of If You See Something, Rasheed’s film is surprisingly warm and romantic, something it achieves through the decision to have the relationship between lead characters Katie and Ali serve as the film’s protagonist. When originally developed by the late Avram Noble Ludwig, however, the first draft was a thriller. “The script that came across my desk in 2016, written by Avram Ludwig, was a full thriller,” Jacobs recounted. “As we continued to develop it, it felt like there was a ceiling of how deep we could go and how much we could both kind of speak to and dismantle both stereotypes and cultural assumptions and, frankly, conversations about immigration.” Jacobs continued, “That desire to continue to deepen that exploration ended up driving us towards a more romantic film, towards a film where the protagonist is the relationship.” The pivot from thriller to romantic drama greatly pays off, especially as the idea of standing by your romantic partner as their legality in the U.S. is questioned rings unsettlingly relatable for many.
In conceptualizing the film as a romantic drama, rather than a thriller, Rasheed and Jacobs foster a groundedness to their story that they hope fosters conversation, rather than just pity or sympathy, about the immigrant experience. “Let’s try to put aside the word pity and sympathy for a second and try and open a door for the understanding and the conversation that we can have about this issue,” Rasheed said. “Because that’s the first step for to break the denial and to break the defense mechanism for anyone who come, who actually practices certain racism, or whatever you want to call it.”
To ensure that these powerful themes and points of discussion resonate, Jacobs wrote the script in a manner that does not preach or talk down to the audience. “Oday and I were both very intentional about the fact that there’s not an agenda in this film,” Jacobs said. “This is not a propagandistic piece. It’s a piece of art. It’s not a PSA, you know? And so in that we hope to build a story and a build and, in Oday’s case, a visual landscape that allowed the film to serve almost as a mirror, that what you see when you experience the film is both a reflection of the story that we told, but also a reflection of your own self, your own preconceived notions, your own assumptions, your own self identity.”
Come the end of 2025, it’ll be difficult to find a film as urgent and timely as If You See Something. Rarely does a feel elicit such warmth and despair in equal measure – in a way perfectly encapsulating the happiness and horrors of real life.
Check out a trailer for If You See Something below….
