During this year’s Sundance Film Festival, “Snowfall” star Amin Joseph delivered one of the strongest performances of the festival in To Live and Die and Live. Having premiered in the industry’s most selective film festival, the film received favorable reviews from top film critics who cited Joseph for his next-to-perfection portrayal of Mohammed in the powerful, passionate and emotionally charged film.
In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Joseph, alongside cast mates Maryam Basir, Cory Hardwick, Skye P. Marshall and filmmaker Qasim Basir opened up about the cultural relevance of the film and the type of impact it has on audiences.
“It was surreal. ‘Yes,’ was easy for [me to say to] Qasim because he speaks truthfully. He said this is something that is perfect for you. … If you listen to these passionate people, this man called me up and had that type of pitch and how can you not get on board with a filmmaker that has that much passion, that much love, that much soul,” Joseph told The Hollywood Reporter in a recent interview at the Sundance Film Festival.
That message was multifaceted as the film touches on love, life, death, addiction and everything in between. “By putting a microscope on these issues in the film. I hope they can be used as a catalyst for the community to take action to receive help with substance abuse and depression,” Joseph told rolling out.
According to statistical data on CDC.org, in 2020 alone, the overdose rates increased by 44 percent for Black people. “Black people 15–24 years old experienced the largest rate increase (86 percent) compared with changes seen in other age/race groups during 2019–2020.” It’s statistics like these that the film hopes to shed light on to effect change in Black communities.
Joseph recalls being on-site in Detroit for the filming and shares one of his most memorable moments. “I remember walking in downtown Detroit … and walking along with our filmmaker, Bashir, as he had the camera attached to his back on a steady camera. We shot very long days and even longer nights, and I watched this filmmaker literally carry the film on his back. Waking in this historical, unapologetically Black city with this enthusiastic filmmaker was a priceless experience,” he says.
“For me, this was a project that we financed with businesspeople that were all Black and a majority of them from Detroit. We’re shooting this film with a skeleton crew, my filmmaker and myself that have been on much bigger budgeted films, [but] we thought the film was so impactful that the filmmaker literally had the film on his back,” Joseph added.
Film critic Christian Zilko wrote that the “slice-of life addiction drama is the cinematic portrait that Detroit deserves.”
