Film journey takes Basir from Detroit to Sundance in Utah
When he was in his 20s, Qasim Basir was running around Detroit making movies and selling them at local liquor stores.
Now in his 40s, Basir is still running around Detroit making movies, but he’s selling them at Sundance instead.
Basir, who grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Detroit, headed to the recent Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, with his latest film, “To Live and Die and Live.”
It’s Basir’s second feature to land at Sundance, after his romance “A Boy. A Girl. A Dream.” played there in 2018. This time might be just a little bit sweeter, given the personal nature of the story, about a filmmaker (played by Amin Joseph) who returns home to Detroit after the death of his stepfather, which was inspired by Basir’s own journey home after the loss of his stepfather five years ago.
“Something had been telling me to write something that scares you, and this was one of those stories,” says Basir, 42, in a recent interview. “So I wrote this story, and it just kind of poured out of me.”
Detroit not only plays a role in the movie, but it’s also arguably its star, as Basir captures the vibrancy of the city in a way that hasn’t been caught on camera since Michigan’s film incentives program ended in 2015. He shot in and around downtown in summer 2021.
“I wanted to shoot Detroit beautiful because no one does that,” says Basir, who shot the film himself in addition to writing, directing and producing. “It’s always the blight, the decay, the destruction. So it was like,
all right, if I have a chance to photograph this city in a way that no one’s done it, that would be kind of cool, as a backdrop to this story.”
“To Live and Die and Live” also stars Skye P. Marshall, Omari Hardwick and several of Basir’s family members, including his sister, Maryam, and his wife, Samantha. Family, community and addiction are all themes in the story, playing out against an airy love story between Joseph and Marshall’s characters.
In 2020, Basir’s mother made him sit down and watch an early movie he made, “Inner Struggle.” He filmed it in the mid-2000s around the BrewsterDouglass Housing Projects in Detroit — making things up and figuring them out as he went along.
Basir had no interest in revisiting “Inner Struggle,” but his mom insisted, and watching it helped realign his perspectives and get him out of his temporary career funk.
“It was probably one of the most important things that could have happened to me,” says Basir. “More than anything, it was a reminder of, man, the audacity of y’all to go and do that. Who was doing that around here then? No one! It was before the incentives, it was before all of that.
“So watching it did a lot for me,” he says. “It was like, you know what? You don’t have to wait on these studios. You know how to do this. You know how to go and make a thing, so maybe you should do that.”
It wasn’t easy. Basir says “To Live and Die and Live” was the most challenging film he has ever made, due in no small part to the birth of his second child during production. Most of the movie takes place at night, so shoots would start around 7 p.m. and stretch until 4 or 5 a.m. And there were COVID-19 logistics and other hurdles that come with making an independent film.
But he soldiered on, raising money from local investors in Detroit and hoping for a return to Sundance on the back end.
Basir wrapped “To Live and Die and Live” in late summer 2021 and submitted the film for Sundance 2022, but it was rejected. He retooled the film, cut 45 minutes and submitted it again, and this time, he got in.
His journey with the film has given him new grounding and has reaffirmed his bond with Detroit.
“It was just a matter of going back to my roots and getting creative with it,” he says.