Paul Wright speaks about new film, Mission, outsiders and misfits, and the mass existential crisis

What happens when you start questioning the way you’re supposed to live?

In Paul Wright’s Mission, we follow a character searching for something beyond the world he knows. We spoke to Wright about outsiders and misfits, the film’s questions around purpose and meaning, and the role of nature, fire, and spirituality throughout the story. He also talks about working with improvisation, creating space for unexpected moments on set, and how some of the film’s most memorable scenes came from simply seeing what would happen.

I love the misfits, the rebels, the outsiders. You mentioned that you were always very interested in those characters that are living on the fringes of society. Do you feel like this is changing a little bit now, that they’re actually moving away from the fringes into a much more centred position in society, as we see in film and literature?

Absolutely, I think I’ve always been interested in an outsider but also getting under the skin of characters that maybe see the world slightly differently. But for me, with this film in particular, the starting place was almost quite a personal thing. Maybe with the work I do, maybe feeling quite disconnected with a lot of elements in the world and how do you then try and make sense of the world. There’s something interesting in that. 

And although we use words like that, ‘outsider’ or ‘misfit’, with Mission and with Dylan, it was the universality of it. I can’t speak for everyone, but to some degree, we’ve all had that feeling of: Is this it? Is there something more? How should I live? What are we doing here?

That was something I was interested in, tapping into that feeling and what the options are: the contrast; the dark and the light that could come from that. 

There’s this big narrative right now on people breaking free, with so many asking those questions after Covid. Is that why it’s so important to tell those stories?

In a lot of ways, it’s the biggest question of all.

Obviously within the film it’s pushed to the extreme, because in some ways that’s something I’m interested in doing within my work.

To various degrees in certain parts of the West, if religion is no longer there, for a lot of people a void of purpose and meaning opens up. You could say that capitalism in some ways tried to replace that and that doesn’t feel like it’s working for a lot of people – it doesn’t give them that meaning, drive, and purpose in life. 

You know you look around the world now and politically it does feel like there’s almost a mass existential crisis going on. This was one way of looking at that and exploring it.

Speaking of religion, there were a lot of scenes with fire. Was that a symbol of rebirth, of breaking away and going back to roots?

In some ways the film is a spiritual journey for the character. I’m not religious myself but at the same time I’m interested in something bigger than us; the meaning, the lightness, the darkness, and putting them together.

A childlike state or a primal state sometimes becomes that. But if you start shedding a lot of that ‘normality’ of how most of us live, and for a good reason, what is left there? Then it becomes an interesting primal thing – connection with nature, with child. These are things that come through in the film: what is important to you? How should we live? How do we make sense of things? 

Is that why it was important to you to let actors improvise a lot of the scenes?

I think it’s about trying to create space where moments and images can happen. My DoP Nick [Cooke] was a huge part of that with the rest of the crew. You try to create these visual moments, then add the sound and create this kind of mosaic of narrative, but more importantly, feelings. It shifts an emotion and hopefully mirrors it for the viewer, that feeling of intense relationship with the sensory nature of the film. Improvisation gives that and allows more options in the edit.

A big part of the film was this character in motion and that feeling of movement and the body. If you strip back certain things, as the character does through the film, then what remains?

In some ways it does feel like quite a physical film.

Was there a particular scene that wasn’t really scripted that surprised you?

The film is full of it! 

For every shoot we had a schedule of scenes but then working with the crew, and the team, it was about shaping moments with George [MacKay] where we could just go wandering for an hour and see if anything happened. A lot of these moments have ended up in the film.

For me, the club scene was quite interesting. In the written document that was a very small thing, an image of five seconds. Within the film, I might not say how we achieved that but it becomes a bigger part of the film in that experiential nature of it.

Also, timewise it becomes a bigger part of the film than it was in the script, so I thought that was interesting – staying on that moment for longer than it was initially planned. It becomes something else and taps into the core idea of the film.

Mission received its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, with remaining screenings on Monday 17th and Tuesday 18th August