SCREENTALK | A FATHER, A BELIEVER, A HITMAN: INSIDE MAHERSHALA ALI’S WORLD

At the BFI Lon­don Film Fest­iv­al, we joined two time Academy Award win­ner Mah­er­shala Ali for a con­ver­sa­tion about his latest film, the com­plex­it­ies of Black fath­er­hood and why he feels he is only just get­ting started.

By Salina Zah­er (SalinaTrans­lates)

A con­tract killer search­ing for breast milk for his new­born daugh­ter is not a storyline I would typ­ic­ally asso­ci­ate with an action thrill­er. Yet in Bas­sam Tariq’s Your Moth­er Your Moth­er Your Moth­er, this unusu­al premise opens up a wider explor­a­tion of faith, grief, fath­er­hood and the con­tra­dic­tions that make us human. You have to watch this movie!

Mah­er­shala Ali plays Latif, a devout Muslim and pro­fes­sion­al hit­man whose life changes fol­low­ing his wife’s death. Left caring for their three chil­dren, he must nav­ig­ate the chal­lenges of par­ent­hood while remain­ing entangled in a dan­ger­ous crim­in­al world. His attempts to pro­tect his fam­ily bring him face to face with the con­sequences of the life he leads.

Dur­ing the Screen Talk, hos­ted by the won­der­ful film crit­ic and broad­caster Amon War­mann, Ali spoke about the film, his career and the stor­ies he wants to tell. As a journ­al­ist of Palestini­an and Lebanese her­it­age, I found myself listen­ing par­tic­u­larly closely when the con­ver­sa­tion turned to what ful­fil­ment means for him as a Black, Muslim act­or in the world of Hollywood.

Mah­er­shala Ali on the com­plex­ity of Black fatherhood

Ali spoke about the lack of com­plex­ity often afforded to Black fath­ers on screen, par­tic­u­larly when their stor­ies involve Muslim identity.

“I don’t feel like Black fath­ers have the dimen­sion­al­ity that I would love for them to have,” he said.

For Ali, the oppor­tun­ity in Moon­light or in this film was about human­ising a char­ac­ter whose iden­tity and actions might oth­er­wise make him easy to dis­miss. Latif believes he is pur­su­ing justice, but his under­stand­ing of it is shaped by his per­cep­tion of racial inequal­ity and fail­ures of account­ab­il­ity with­in Amer­ic­an society.

His wider reflec­tion on storytelling stayed with me:

“If you’re not at the centre of that story, that means you’re on the peri­phery and the edges of that story,” he explained.

I con­nec­ted with this idea because I know how much the stor­ies told about a com­munity can shape how it is under­stood bey­ond its own bound­ar­ies. Our his­tor­ies, iden­tit­ies and exper­i­ences are rarely simple, yet they can be reduced to a hand­ful of famil­i­ar nar­rat­ives when oth­er people are doing the telling.

The Palestini­an and Lebanese exper­i­ences are dis­tinct from the exper­i­ences Ali was dis­cuss­ing, and I would nev­er sug­gest oth­er­wise. But his ques­tion about who gets to occupy the centre of a story res­on­ated with me. Who gets to be com­plic­ated? Who gets the space to explain them­selves? And who is too often spoken about without being fully understood?

For me, these ques­tions make rep­res­ent­a­tion about more than vis­ib­il­ity. They are about allow­ing com­munit­ies to exist in their full com­plex­ity, with all the con­tra­dic­tions, his­tor­ies and human­ity that entails. Through Latif, Your Moth­er Your Moth­er Your Moth­er explores what hap­pens when faith, fath­er­hood and viol­ence col­lide, res­ist­ing the tempta­tion to reduce a per­son to a single aspect of who they are.

Mah­er­shala Ali on find­ing his cre­at­ive voice

Bey­ond the film, I was drawn to Ali’s reflec­tions on iden­tity and cre­at­ive fulfilment.

“I just found myself really look­ing to find, like, what is my thing? Or what are my things? Who am I?”

He recalled his fath­er win­ning a major dance com­pet­i­tion when he was young, giv­ing him an early example of what it meant to pur­sue some­thing uncon­ven­tion­al. That exper­i­ence helped him recog­nise the value of listen­ing to an inner voice, even when the path ahead might seem imprac­tic­al to others.

Although Ali had found suc­cess in oth­er areas, act­ing offered him a par­tic­u­lar sense of ful­fil­ment. Explor­ing char­ac­ters and ques­tion­ing why cer­tain per­form­ances res­on­ated helped him under­stand him­self more deeply.

What I appre­ci­ated most was his acknow­ledge­ment that act­ing does not ful­fil every cre­at­ive need. He spoke about mak­ing beats on his MPC and writ­ing poetry, explain­ing how dif­fer­ent artist­ic out­lets come togeth­er to help him feel more fully himself.

For cre­at­ives work­ing across music, film, writ­ing and the wider arts, I think there is some­thing import­ant here. Our cre­at­ive iden­tit­ies are often shaped by more than indi­vidu­al ambi­tion. They can also be rooted in where we come from, the com­munit­ies that raised us, the his­tor­ies we carry and the exper­i­ences we feel com­pelled to articulate.

That does not mean every artist has to tell their community’s story. But it does raise an inter­est­ing ques­tion about what drives us to cre­ate in the first place, and wheth­er we are mak­ing space for the things that genu­inely mat­ter to us.

Why Mah­er­shala Ali feels he is only just get­ting started

Towards the end of the con­ver­sa­tion, War­mann asked Ali about his pre­vi­ous state­ment that, des­pite work­ing as an act­or since 1993, he felt as though he had only just started.

Ali spoke about feel­ing increas­ingly con­nec­ted to the stor­ies he wants to tell and using more of his cre­at­ive capa­city. He also reflec­ted on bal­an­cing his ambi­tions with fam­ily life, includ­ing mak­ing time for his daughter.

One line par­tic­u­larly stayed with me:

“I finally feel tired in the right way.”

I found this a refresh­ing way to describe the rela­tion­ship between work and ful­fil­ment. There is a dif­fer­ence between being exhausted from con­stantly chas­ing some­thing and feel­ing tired because you have giv­en your­self fully to work that mat­ters to you.

Amon War­mann also did a great job of draw­ing con­nec­tions between Ali’s dif­fer­ent roles while high­light­ing their dif­fer­ences. From Moon­light and Green Book to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Your Moth­er Your Moth­er Your Moth­er, Ali has explored very dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters, often bring­ing out the con­tra­dic­tions or dual­it­ies with­in human nature. And no… there were no Spi­der­m­an spoil­ers unfortunately.

Leav­ing the Screen Talk, I found myself think­ing about how eas­ily we can lose sight of ourselves while build­ing careers that look suc­cess­ful from the out­side. We chase oppor­tun­it­ies, nav­ig­ate expect­a­tions and some­times become so focused on get­ting some­where that we for­get to ask wheth­er the path we are fol­low­ing ful­fils us.

For me, Ali’s reflec­tions con­nec­ted ambi­tion with some­thing deep­er: the need to feel that our work is mean­ing­ful, that our cre­at­ive voices have some­where to go and that we are not abandon­ing import­ant parts of ourselves in pur­suit of success.

As a Palestini­an and Lebanese journ­al­ist, I am par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in how iden­tity, com­munity and rep­res­ent­a­tion shape the stor­ies we tell. But I also see this as a ques­tion that reaches across cre­at­ive indus­tries and back­grounds. Wheth­er we make music, write, dir­ect or per­form, our work is influ­enced by the worlds we inhab­it and the things we want oth­ers to understand.

Ali may feel he is only just get­ting star­ted, but I left with a renewed appre­ci­ation for the fact that cre­at­ive ful­fil­ment is not simply about reach­ing a par­tic­u­lar level of suc­cess. It is also about under­stand­ing what you want to say, whose stor­ies mat­ter to you and how much of your­self you are will­ing to bring to the work.

Your Moth­er Your Moth­er Your Moth­er is sched­uled for UK cinema release on Fri­day, 20 Novem­ber 2026.