After We Leave, winner of Best Feature Film at Sci-Fi-London 2019, is a gritty sci-fi drama about a man who has a once-in-a-lifetime chance to emigrate off Earth… if only he can find his estranged wife and convince her to come with him.
The film, the first feature feature from Los Angeles based writer/director Aleem Hossain, was made on a budget of $30,000; and stars Brian Silverman, Clay Wilcox, Anslem Richardson, Anita Leeman Torres, James Black, Cesar De Leon, Gabrielle Gumbs, Phinneas Kiyomura, Andrea Ruth, Joe Sachem, Mark Salamen, Naomi Salamon, Dinora Walcott and Bernard White.
Next up, After We Leave will screen at the Berlin Sci-Fi FilmFest on November 29 and has its North American premiere at Other Worlds Austin from December 5.
After We Leave is set in a near-future Los Angeles when times are bleak with permanent recession, extreme water rationing, and rising crime. Six years ago Jack Chaney abandoned his wife and vanished. Now he’s back and nobody in Los Angeles is happy to see him. Before he left, Jack and his wife had applied for a visa to immigrate to a better life on an off-world colony. The visa has finally come through but Jack cannot leave Earth without her. It’s a couples visa and only married couples can go in order to populate the new colonies. As the deadline for the visa looms, Jack struggles to figure out what happened to his wife. And in doing so, he must confront the person he used to be and figure out whether he’s really changed.
Is Jack back because he wants to make things right or because he needs his wife to use this ticket to a better life?
Aleem Hossain, Writer/Director, is a filmmaker, AR/VR creator, and professor. His father is a Muslim from Bangladesh and his mother grew up in a New England Roman Catholic family. This multi-racial/multi-cultural background shapes and inspires his creative work today. Aleem was selected for the initial Oculus Launchpad program, a VR incubator run by Facebook/Oculus, where he began developing his ongoing documentary VR series, I NEVER TOLD YOU. He was an artist-in-residence at the 2017 VR Action Lab where he created NO EASY ANSWERS, a VR anti-bullying project, in collaboration with Google, Harmony Labs, and Screenwriters Colony. It has been translated into several languages and is used by Google Daydream in schools around the world. He is currently developing YOU ARE FOREVER, YOU ARE EVERYONE, an interactive narrative sci-fi VR experience with the support of the Tribeca Film Institute. Aleem is also Assistant Professor of Digital Storytelling at Occidental College in Los Angeles where his teaching and research are focused on expanding how we tell stories and who gets to tell them.