Oscar-Longlisted Director On Writing Characters, Directing Russell Tovey & Raindance-Selected Short

Flickside's Joseph Jenkinson sits down with writer-director Sai Karan Talwar to discuss I Am The Prize, his latest short film currently screening at Raindance Film Festival and Frameline. Talwar — whose previous short What Men Do For Love was Oscar longlisted for 2026 — talks character construction, working with Russell Tovey, shooting an ambitious short film in two days, and what aspiring filmmakers can learn from making their first short. Talwar’s debut short Ghanimah (2022) was BAFTA and BIFA qualified and screened at over 60 festivals. (A treasure trove of a conversation for film students, aspiring filmmakers and cinephiles. Stick around till the end for some great film recommendations!). Your film is about a man who has fully bought into a very particular idea of what it means to be a ‘man.’ And it arrives at a moment when this conversation is everywhere. It’s a well-trodden subject. But what struck me about your film is the angle you chose, because Anthony, played by Russell Tovey, is reprehensible, yes, but also genuinely complicated. What did you feel you could bring to this conversation that hadn’t already been said? The key thing is that this character has been around in my mind for a long time. Anthony exists within a larger story I wrote during the BBC Writers’ Room programme, where I was developing a pilot over about a year and a half. He was one of several intersecting characters in that world. That script had originally been a feature, then became a pilot, and later I went back to the feature and reworked it into something tighter. So Anthony has been in gestation since around 2020 or 2021, when figures like Jordan Peterson were already visible and Andrew Tate was just beginning to emerge. Since then, that whole culture has evolved, and I wanted to make sure the character stayed current with what was happening in real time. What interested me was that we’ve often seen people influenced by these figures, younger men acting on those ideas, but we haven’t spent enough time looking directly at the source. Who are these men? Why do they do this? What leads them to become the kind of people others follow? If you tackle the issue at its root, there’s a chance to show that these men are just conmen, and that they don’t deserve the power they’ve been given. I think we’ve seen the effect of the ideology, and now we’re starting to look at the cause. The next step, hopefully, is that we’ll start seeing more stories about the victims of that culture too. That leads well into my next question: where did Anthony come from? How did you develop him as a character? He really came out of graduating around 2020 and watching these figures become more visible. At first, it was the Jordan Peterson types, then the Andrew Tates, then a whole wave of similar people after that. Initially, it all felt niche. You’d have friends recommending them, saying, “These guys are really interesting – you should check them out.” Then the more you looked into it, the more you realised how twisted and morally bankrupt it all was. The ideology underneath it was deeply unsettling... Read Sai Karan Talwar on Writing Characters, Directing Russell Tovey & Making Raindance-Selected ‘I Am The Prize’ https://flickside.com/sai-karan-talwa... The interview was recorded on June 15, 2026. L. Ron Hubbard, The Pass, Roy Cohn, Plainclothes, filming a scene, movie scene, ZeeGee, handheld camera, how to shoot a film, Patton (1970), character arc, how to write a character, how to make a film, how to write a film, how to make a short film, how to make your first short film, writing villains, writing characters, filmmaking lessons, filmmaking tips, during shooting, microphones, movie themes, queer, Angels in America, The Pass, film students, aspiring filmmakers, film festivals, first film, story, experienced actors. Subscribe to Flickside:    / @flicksideofficial   Website: https://flickside.com/ Instagram:   / flickside_official   Threads: https://www.threads.net/@flickside_of... Twitter:   / flicksidem   Facebook:   / flicksidemovies