Jack Coyle
Associated Press Film Writer
A scene from Riz Ahmed in the Oscar-winning short The Long Goodbye. (SomeSuch and Left Hand Films via AP)
NEW YORK (AP) — Pakistani actor, musician and activist Riz Ahmed won best short film for “The Long Farewell” at the 2022 Academy Awards on March 27.
Ahmed co-wrote and starred in the 12-minute film.
In his acceptance speech, Ahmed, 39, said: “In such divisive times, we believe the role of stories is to remind us that there is no ‘us’ and ‘them’. There is only ‘us’.
Ahmed was nominated for an Oscar last year for his role as the hearing-impaired drummer on “The Sound of Metal,” losing to Anthony Hopkins.
“The Long Goodbye” is heartfelt, harrowingly violent and extremely urgent.
Directed by Aneil Karia, the film is initially naturalistic and immersed in the pre-wedding preparations of a South Asian family in suburban England. These concerns are familiar. Where should the chair be placed. Who wrote “Blinded by the Light”.
But Ahmed’s character peeks out the window to the unmarked van of masked white militants coming outside. Daily life was violently disrupted. They soon started rounding up people and executing them. The nightmarish scene culminates in an angry monologue that Ahmed staggers through the street, referencing his song “Where Are You From” — a passionate testimony to cross-cultural identity.
“Everyone everywhere wants their country back now,” Ahmed said to the camera. “If you want me to go back to where I was, man, I need a map.”
For Ahmed, “The Long Goodbye,” which is being streamed on YouTube, expresses his own fears, while drawing on the current conflict against immigrants and immigrants to combat a wave of racism shrouded in nationalism.
“In the post-Brexit UK, we’re feeling this rising xenophobia. It’s starting to feel a little deafening. You get there and you have to grab someone and say, ‘Did you hear that? Do you feel that way? I am? Wasn’t it a panic attack?” Ahmed said in a recent interview in London. “Anil and I wanted to urgently tell a story about this, pour out our feelings, dig up our nightmares and put them into the world.”
The scenes that play out in “The Long Goodbye” look more like those that might take place in a more remote corner of the globe. But for Ahmed, the film reflects both the day-to-day emotional realities of different peoples in increasingly divided Western democracies, as well as the reality elsewhere.
“Really, where this story takes place is in our minds. But it also happened in the memory of our ancestors,” Ahmed said. “It’s happening in Ukraine now. It’s happening in India, there was a massacre last year. It’s happening in Myanmar. It’s happening in America. It’s happening in Bosnia.”
“The Long Goodbye” isn’t the only Oscar nominee battling these issues — or the only one associated with Ahmed. Ahmed is also executive producer of “Escape,” an animated documentary about an Afghan immigrant’s twisty path to start a new life in Denmark and ultimately self-acceptance. Escape is the first film ever to be nominated for Best Documentary, Best Animated Film and Best Foreign Language Film.
“‘The Long Goodbye’ is about identity, family and belonging. ‘Escape’ is about identity, family and belonging,” Ahmed said. “The conversation of our time seems to be about identity, family and who belongs where.”
Ahmed made history last year by becoming the first Muslim to be nominated for a leading male lead, playing a deaf drummer on “The Sound of Metal.” This year, the short category is one of eight awards given out an hour before the telecast begins. While the academy promised to honor each winner during the broadcast, the decision was heavily criticized by some in the industry. Whether or not he has a film nominated for one of the eight nominations, Ahmed said he would like to see a live screening during the telecast.
“The (Oscars) community is about recognizing older people and promoting new ones,” Ahmed said. “So a lot of times, the short film category is where new talent comes in. Aneil Karia is a name that will ring for years to come.”
Ahmed, 39, who was born in Wembley, outside London, to Pakistani parents, often speaks of his mixed feelings about identity and how to succeed in “the British business”. “Maybe I’m from everywhere,” he raps on “Where Are You From.”
Working with researchers at the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, Ahmed highlights how often Muslims are marginalized or stereotyped in film and television. Of the 8,965 speaking characters identified in the 200 highest-grossing films released between 2017 and 2019, only 1.6 percent were Muslim, but 30 percent were perpetrators of violence.
While the second half is suddenly violent, The Long Goodbye’s early, fleeting family scenes are enough to compose something rarely captured in mainstream films—a simple Muslim family. While Ahmed sees “The Long Goodbye” and “The Runaway” as being tied to the present moment, he also sees them as reflecting an eternal struggle – in Lin-Manuel “Encanto” Folk and Immigrant Fables won the Academy Award for Best Song.
“Stories about refugees, stories about intolerance, films like ‘The Long Goodbye,’ films like ‘The Run’, in a way, have us facing questions that whoever we are, are asking myself,” Ahmed said. “That’s why I think these are timeless stories. You look at the Aeneid. Aeneas was driven out of Troy. It was looted and he was a refugee.
“He went on to find Rome, by the way. Not bad for refugees,” Ahmed added with a smile. “Maybe with Apple and Syrian refugee Steve Jobs.”
But if “The Long Goodbye” looks grim, its horns, too, stirring up its defiance, are blaring directly into the camera. In its radical turn, Carriah’s film itself breaks the mold.
“When you tell your story, you’re sharing your experience with someone,” Ahmed said. “You put yourself out there to connect. When other people connect to this experience, man, that’s hope. Hope is connection.”
