Award-winning DGA Director Dastan Khalili’s Day9 to Have World Premiere at LA Shorts International Film Festival – Thriller Satire Short To Screen on July 25th at Regal LA Live Cinemas
Thriller satire short Day9 will have its world premiere at the LA Short International Film Festival on July 25, 2023, at 3:15 p.m. PST at Regal LA Live Cinemas in downtown Los Angeles.
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 7/10/23 – Take a sadistic millionaire, combine him with four individuals motivated by the promise of a huge payday, and toss them into a harsh, unforgiving landscape. The result is Day 9, a brilliant short film by award-winning DGA director Khalil Dastan, which will be making its premiere at the LA Shorts International Film Festival.
Speaking from Rome, where he was meeting with prospective distributors for another of his projects, Khalili told The Hollywood Times that aside from the actors, with whom he had previously worked, the crew was assembled entirely online.
“We had no previous history,” he said, adding that his experience as a filmmaker allowed him to experiment with this concept. “Obviously having that, I made sure my questions were as such so I could make sure they were reliable. And I do my research.”
Khalil said that experimental concepts permeated the production process from start to finish, including screenplay writer Damon Stevenson.
“I put out a request for looking for a single location script and I got many options given to me, he said. “All of my communication with him was via email and a brief phone conversation… I never met him personally.”
Even postproduction was a blind choice. The music for the film was produced by Jordan Paul Rousseau, who Khalili never met in person.
“Jordan does an amazing soundtrack,” he said. “He reached out to me from Antwerp, Belgium, and elicited my curiosity. And I gave him a few minutes of the film and he tracked it. I said you got it, you understand it perfectly.’ He did the entire soundtrack with the delivery online.”
Khalili said the who experience of filming Day 9 was a grand experiment in “resourcing online talent globally…to bring together and deliver a product very quickly.”
“I’m grateful to them for showing up and giving, and at the same time, allowing this king of experimentation, he said. “Short films allow it, and I enjoy going into short film.”
Official Trailer: Day-9 trailer.mov on Vimeo
In the film, Dobroth, played by Charles Maze (Among Thieves, General Hospital) is a merciless millionaire who assembles a team of resilient workers and forces them to toil in an uninhabitable wasteland until they are pushed to their limits, both mentally and physically, leading to as climax that is both shocking and not unexpected. Khalili said the plot was not totally defined until he began working with the cast to flesh out their various backstories.
“We talked about the history of the characters and we all agreed (Dobroth) had something on each of them that forced them into this situation, and allowed him to vent his sadistic will on them,” he said.
It was certainly a “carrot-and-stick” scenario, Khalili said. “It was as much survival as it was disdain” that led to the film’s climax.
The rest of the cast included Will Laupardus (Storage Wars), and Kelcey Watson (Snowfall), along with Eric McIntire (One Tree Hill, Spartacus), and Johanna Watts (Bullet Train, Star Trek: Enterprise).
Khalil pointed out a fifth cast member, the location. Day 9 was filmed at the Trona Pinnacles in Ridgecrest, CA, which he called “a beautiful, vast barren, awesome and terrifying landscape.”
“It’s really a reflection of what everybody is going through,” Khalili said. They’re all dealing with this minimalistic emptiness, so I thought it was perfect.”
In the end, Day 9 is an examination of the characters’ lives and the challenges they face day to day, the director said.
“It really is exploring how much of the lives we live are actually personal choices, and how willing are we to take radical responsibility for our choices instead of playing the victim.”
Day 9 will get is premiere screening on July 25th at 3:15 PM PDT at Regal LA Live Cinemas in downtown Los Angeles.
The Hollywood Times had the pleasure speaking with director Dastan Khalili, as he was in Rome at the time of this interview. You have to love Zoom! Enjoy the interview:
Dastan Khalili began his filmmaking career in 1995 after graduating with a Bachelor of Arts from the Pomona University Theater Academy. The award-winning, DGA director’s first feature Insomnia Manica garnered best feature and best director at the NYC Independent Film Festival in 2005, and his documentary Earth Turns To Gold won best documentary feature and best documentary director at NYCIFF 2010. In 2011, he was awarded best environmental documentary director the New York Film Festival for his film Making Of A Dream. His critically acclaimed feature, the martial arts drama The Way was released on all major streaming platforms by Gravitas Ventures in 2022.
LA Shorts International Film Festival ranks among the most prestigious and largest international short film festivals in the world. The festival is accredited by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences OSCAR®, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts BAFTA, and the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television ACCT Canadian Screen Awards and The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of Spain GOYA AWARDS. 66 LA Shorts filmmakers have earned Academy Award® nominations, with 17 taking home the Oscar. LA Shorts is the longest-running short film festival in Los Angeles. The festival screens over 300 films and attracts 10,000 attendees each year including Hollywood industry professionals and emerging undiscovered independent filmmakers.
@dastankhalili dastankhalili.com
