Asylum Seekers (film) - Production

Production

In an interview with indieWire, director Rania Ajami stated that the idea for the film came from a recurring dream that her brother had about a "giant beard" that was trying to devour him. From the premise of her brother's dreams, Ajami created a play titled The Giant Swearing Beard that told the story of six people trying to break into an asylum. About six years later, Ajami was inspired by discussions about political asylum seekers and decided that a film based on the premise of her play would be a suitable metaphor for the real-world political issues.

With an estimated budget of US $1.5 million, the creators of the film made adjustments to stay within the modest budget while also attempting to stay true to the "visual scope of the film " and the perceived "fantasy world".

Asylum Seekers was filmed entirely on Red Digital Cinema Camera Company's Red One camera, a digital video camera capable of recording video in 12-megapixel resolution directly to flash memory or a hard disk drive. As of August 2008, the Red One was being used to film at least 40 feature films but Asylum Seekers is one of the first independent film features to use the camera. The production team of the film opted for the Red One because if offered significant financial savings over a 35 mm film film camera while not compromising image quality.

Rania Ajami said that the casting process took over a year because she found that the biggest challenge in the production process "was to find good people to work with". The production was then halted for another month before the filming could begin because Ajami had contracted Infectious Mononucleosis — usually referred to as mono — and had to spend a month in bed.