Asylum Seekers (2009)

Interesting facts

Asylum Seekers is a 2009 American black comedy film written and directed by Rania Ajami. The film stars Pepper Binkley and Daniel Irizarry as two of the six social outcast protagonists who attempt to commit themselves to an insane asylum to spice up their lives. Bill Dawes, Judith Hawking, Stella Maeve, Camille O'Sullivan, and Lee Wilkof also star in the film.

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.

With an estimated budget of $1.5 million, the film's production team 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'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 used to film at least 40 feature films, but Asylum Seekers was one of the first independent features to use the camera.

Rania Ajami said the casting process took over a year because she found that the biggest challenge in the production process "was finding 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.

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