For filmmaker Darius Shu, true cinema exists in what characters leave unsaid – the shared glances, the physical distances, and the heavy pauses.
Following a sweeping run across 13 international film festivals and its national launch on Channel 4, the multi-hyphenate creator behind Molly sits down to discuss capturing a chance launderette encounter, challenging the dangerous trope of blindly following your heart, and educating audiences on forms of intimacy we rarely see in modern media.
The story begins with a chance encounter in a launderette – an ordinary setting that becomes the starting point for a much more complicated connection. What appealed to you about beginning a romantic drama somewhere so everyday, rather than in a more traditionally romantic setting?
I’ve always been intrigued by the idea that life’s most defining moments can happen in the most ordinary of places. A launderette is a place people go to because they have to, not because they are romantically inclined. You’re waiting for your laundry to finish, wasting time, maybe a little bored or lonely. It is also a metaphor for something transactional, reflecting what modern relationships can be like these days. But there’s something lovely about the prospect of meeting someone who can unexpectedly change your world in a launderette.
I wanted the romance in Molly to feel organic, like something that could happen to anyone. There’s also a hushed intimacy in a launderette, where you are in the middle of strangers but everyone is lost in their own little world. It becomes a place where two people can just take their guards down, if only for a moment. For me, it’s the contrast between the mundane and the emotional – the juxtaposition of it all. Sometimes the smallest moments leave the deepest marks on us.
Molly is described as a queer British East Asian romantic drama, bringing together identities that are still underrepresented on screen. How important was it to tell this particular story through that cultural perspective, without feeling the need to explain or justify the characters’ identities to the audience?
It was so important to me because I wanted to see stories that reflected the complexities of my life and those around me. I am interested in exploring the nature of intimacy, identity, and belonging when the world may not always have a place for you.
But I also didn’t want to make a movie that felt like it needed to educate its audience or justify its characters’ existence. Our identities are a part of who we are – we as East Asians are part of the fabric of British society – but they don’t have to tell the whole story. Queer East Asian characters deserve to be given a chance to do all the messy, complex, and sometimes irrational things that all of us go through. They should have the chance to fall in love, make mistakes, and get hurt.
Molly allowed us to meet Vinnie and Ryan as people first, before we understood everything about who they were. I believe it’s important for underrepresented characters to be able to exist on screen without needing to know every part of who they are. I think there is power in being able to just see an underrepresented character in action, with all their complexity and flaws. Representation is not just about being seen; it’s about being a fully human person.
The logline suggests that Vinnie and Ryan’s growing closeness eventually threatens what they have already built in their lives. What interested you about the point where attraction stops being exciting and starts demanding difficult choices?
I am interested in the distance between our feelings and what we believe we should feel. Attraction is alluring because, at first, it’s a feeling of possibility. We imagine what a person can mean to us, what forming a relationship could be like, and how it might feel. But when this connection becomes real, it asks something of us, challenges our boundaries and expectations, and sometimes even the life that we have so carefully arranged.
What interested me about Vinnie and Ryan was that they weren’t necessarily looking for the same thing, even though they’re attracted to each other. Vinnie’s relationship with intimacy is quite different from Ryan’s, and neither of them has a ready answer for how to manage that difference. What I learned through my research is that there is a difference and separation between romantic and sexual attraction. Their connection forces them to confront not only what they want from each other, but what they’re willing to ask of another person as we explore the vastness of the asexuality spectrum, which comes in many forms. In a world where hyper-sexualization at the start of meeting someone new is the norm, what happens when you don’t actually want to begin that way?
I think that this is when romance gets interesting for me – when the feeling alone is not enough. You can sincerely care about someone but still be hurt by incompatibility; you can want to be close to someone without knowing how to give them what they need. I wanted to explore that uncomfortable space without making either character the villain.
You took on the roles of writer, director, and director of photography. How did being responsible for the film’s visual language influence the way you wrote and directed the relationship, particularly in moments when what the characters don’t say might matter more than their dialogue?
By doing all three, I was able to approach the film as one continuous emotional experience, where the writing, the actors, and the cinematography could speak to one another. My particular interest is in what happens between people without speaking: the pause before answering a question, the decision to hold someone’s gaze longer, or the small physical movement that shows that someone has suddenly become exposed.
I wanted the camera to be attentive to the characters rather than simply observing them. Since I directed the film as well as the photography, I was able to build these moments directly into the visual language. We often favored faces, eye contact, and small gestures over more conventional coverage, allowing the audience to remain with the characters and interpret what might be happening beneath the surface without much cutting. Sometimes the framing and the distance between them could say more than the dialogue.
Visually, I was drawn to a warmth that felt nostalgic without belonging to a particular timeless ’80s/’90s period. We shot in a 1.66 aspect ratio, using Cooke SP3 lenses on the Sony FX6. I wanted the image to feel intimate and tactile, as though we were inhabiting the same small spaces as the characters.
Ultimately, I didn’t want the film to tell the public exactly what they should feel; I wanted it to create conditions which would allow them to feel something themselves depending on their own personal relationships and experiences with intimacy. To my mind, the most interesting pictures are those in which some doubt remains.
Romantic dramas often present love as something that ultimately makes life better, but Molly suggests that intimacy can also fracture existing relationships and force people to confront uncomfortable truths. Were you interested in challenging the idea that following your feelings is always the right thing to do?
I can see a kind of dangerous romanticizing in the idea of “following your heart.” It is as if the intensity of a feeling should be decisive – treated as absolute proof that a course of action is right. But feelings are complicated. They can reveal something important about ourselves while simultaneously making us selfish, impetuous, or blind to the needs of others.
I wanted to explore in Molly the core differences between desire, intimacy, and genuine care. Wanting someone does not necessarily mean knowing how to love them, and loving someone does not automatically mean being able to give them what they need. We sometimes pursue the pleasure we receive from a certain person without considering what the other person is actually experiencing.
This was particularly important in exploring Vinnie’s relationship with intimacy. His experience challenges certain expectations about what romantic love should be, especially in a culture that often equates physical desire with emotional connection. I wanted to create a place for a different kind of intimacy, but without suggesting that one person’s needs are more valid than another’s, showing that every other simple, little thing in life can still be considered deeply intimate.
I don’t think the film gives a clear moral answer, and that’s intentional. It isn’t for me to tell the audience who is right or wrong, but rather to make them sit with the discomfort of seeing themselves in both characters.
With Molly receiving international festival recognition and a Best British Film win at the Iris Prize Film Festival, what has surprised you most about the way audiences have responded to the film? Has anyone’s interpretation made you see a character or moment differently?
What I appreciate most of all are the conversations that people have started after seeing the film; no matter how they identify, everyone manages to relate to it universally. Some, having watched the same scene, empathise more with Vinnie’s need to understand intimacy on his own terms, while others recognize Ryan’s longing for closeness and reassurance. But I have come to understand that neither response necessarily invalidates the other.
I believe that is the beauty of cinema. A film no longer belongs to its creator alone. The audience brings its own histories, uncertainties, and experiences of love to it, finding meanings that the creator may not have consciously intended but that can still be emotionally true.
For me, the greatest achievement is not necessarily that people agree with the film. It is that people leave thinking about their own relationships, about how they express their love, and seeing the world with a new perspective. It educates them about other forms of intimacy and love that we rarely see in the media, and about the things they find difficult to put into words. If Molly makes someone feel a little less alone in an experience they previously couldn’t articulate, then the four years of work have been well spent.
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