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This did not impede Tariq from living the dream. Out of the ashes of Blade comes Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, a riveting, often spectral drama about a Muslim contract killer fighting to protect his children and provide for his newborn baby. Set in Texas, immersed in the culture of Islam, and undulating from gripping family drama to full-blown John Wickian action cinema at a moment’s notice, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is more than a redemption act for both Tariq and Ali. If anything, it feels like the movie both men were born to make.
Ahead of Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’s world premiere at the 2026 Toronto Film Festival and its Sept. 25 release date, I had a chance to speak to Tariq about crafting such a personal film that doubles as an adrenaline rush. You bet your ass Shenmue came up in conversation with a filmmaker whose inspirations range from video games to Lynne Ramsay and his own life as a parent.
Polygon: Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is a movie where the director and lead actor feel in perfect sync, then drop a hammer on the audience. How would you describe your connection with Mahershala Ali going into this?
Bassam Tariq: Film is so collaborative, dude. It’s so incredibly collaborative, and I think you need a muse. I know even Lynne Ramsay talks about when she wrote You Were Never Really Here, her desktop picture was Joaquin Phoenix, and then she just wrote the thing. Only he could have been in that movie, and you could tell.
Similarly, I’ve been blessed, whether with Riz [Ahmed] on Mogul Mowgli and then with Bait, and then with Mahershala with this… Like, I had written the script with him in mind. In my earliest drafts dude, I didn’t even have a name for the character. I just wrote “Mahershala.” And I didn’t know the dude! I started writing this during the pandemic, before I got Blade.
Where did you two eventually meet?
We met in LA, at a vegan place, while we were still doing Blade. It was just a vibe check to see if we were on the same wavelength here, to see what we wanted to make. And I think right away I was like, Oh, this guy… we have to make something together. We both had that feeling at the time.
If Blade had come together, would you have made Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother? I’m sure that movie would have been rad, but I am thrilled this one exists.
It’s all really miraculous. There’s no other way to put it. The big learning in this for me was… I’m a writer and I love to write. And writing this film was so helpful for me with figuring out a lot of things as a parent, as a husband, and so many of the challenges that I had been putting off trying to be a successful filmmaker. When everything stops, and you’re able to just look within, and I had this amazing opportunity to do that when I left [Blade], I think those pieces helped me feel strong enough and confident enough to go to Mahershala and be like, “Hey, look, this is something I think you and I have to do together.”
We left on good terms and there was always that feeling that we had to work together. But you look at the media and people will say random things. And you can’t go online and talk — that’s such a waste of energy. I think it’s Kara Walker who said this beautiful thing about, “I put my outrage in my art.” Not that I was outraged, but I was not going to sit there and argue online. The best thing to do is just do the work and the work will speak for itself.
Are you happy with how everything ultimately went?
The thing when you control something, and you can write it and put it together from a space and a community that only you can do, there’s something really special about that. That’s what we’re seeing happening a lot right now: really strong author-driven stuff. When you’re in [Marvel’s] system, and it’s a really good system, they even tell you: “You’re doing a film for Marvel.” It’s not a film by Bassam Tariq. It’s a Marvel film that Bassam Tariq is directing. It’s Kevin’s show — and that’s amazing. What he’s doing is brilliant. I love him and what he’s been building, but it’s his show.
So to have a voice as a filmmaker, to be clear and have a position on what a camera means and how a camera should sit, is the better way for me.
How did the character of Latif take shape when Mahershala came on board?
We did readthroughs together of the script. We spoke a lot about accents and how he carries himself; the way he moves is not how Mahershala moves. There’s a very specific gait that he’s given to Latif. Yeah. There’s a voice that he does, he’s got this interesting southern drawl going. His words are falling into each other. This all came with a lot of conversations we had about what it means to be from the South. I grew up between New York and Houston, and he’s got family in the South as well, so I think we were able to really pull from people that we know and things from the communities that we come from.
Him also being Muslim helps immensely because I didn’t have to explain anything to him. If he and I are on set, we could just look at each other and go “OK, cool.” So much of my life as a Muslim filmmaker is sitting there explaining things about, like, “Well, I’ve got this thing and I got a prayer and blah, blah, blah. We face this way.” It’s like, with Mahershala, just not to do any of that.
The movie works in that way too. They’re in the mosque, they’re at home, Latif is at a strip club, then we’re back at school among prayer. It’s refreshingly immersive rather than anthropological.
I’ve been really blessed, man. I have to give a big shout-out to Alana Mayo, the head of the studio, Orion. She kind of allowed us to be this blunt with it, where it was just so effortless. I also believe audiences are really smart. I know there’s this whole thing, like, “We have to hit people over the head.” It’s like… you don’t.
You know this at Polygon. So my brother and I, we’re Batman gamers. My kids are gamers too. So, for example, um, Five Nights at Freddy’s… I can’t believe I’m talking about this in an interview…
Go, go, go.
So in FNAF, you don’t know the whole story, you just know a little bit. And then there’s all this lore of like William Afton, this and that. There’s something really great about viewers who just need to know a little bit, just enough to get through. To be treated as if they’re smart. Then they can do their own research further if they wanna know what a word means. People love to do that. Let’s give them things to learn, not make it an after-school special, you know?
Do you think about video games when you make a movie like this? As much as movies? It’s only dawning on me now the way that this movie elegantly slides from big life moments to combat kinda has a lot to do with “open-world” storytelling.
Absolutely. My favorite game is Chrono Trigger. I also loved that game on the Dreamcast that everyone really hated… Shenmue? I loved the first Shenmue. I had to get a pirated version of Shenmue 2 because it never came out, or only came out in Europe. It was such an emotional journey to see this character learn how to fight. Then to also be in the banality of his every day. And that was something that I was really moved by.
Damn, I think you made a good version of a Shenmue movie.
Here’s something that’s really great about Shenmue: It takes place in the ’80s, I think? But it’s trying to go back to this lore that’s back in the day, very fantastical, but everything’s still very grounded. In Shenmue 2, you’re in Hong Kong and so much of it is working a job, on a forklift. And it’s like… what am I doing here? I love that. Because then there’s something that then pays off that when the fights happen, and they actually feel so alive, you’re so invested.
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother opens in theaters on Sept. 25.
