Director Dastan Khalili’s latest action film blends martial arts and spirituality.
The Roman Show spoke to Khalili about his film The Way, which will debut this month in certain theaters with a wider distribution set for early 2022.
The film features a powerful female leading a cast and the spiritual journeys of the main characters, which are vital to the storyline.
“It will be different for everyone depending on where they are {in life},” he said. “For myself, as a writer, director and filmmaker my intention is not to teach or preach; it is really a story about grief, relationship, family, loss and redemption.”
The Way is the story of Jane Arcs (Eli Jane), who thirteen years ago was condemned to death after brutally killing her opponent in an underground street fight. Now, in just 24 hours, Jane will be executed for her crime. During her years on Death Row, Jane has undergone a major evolution under the tutelage of a fellow inmate and Qi Gong Master Xin (Joan Wong/ the niece of Kung-Fu Master Wong Jack Man, who was best known for his controversial duel with Bruce Lee in 1964), learning the way of Qi Gong and ostensibly gaining supernatural abilities.
Khalili, a martial arts practitioner, said he was motivated to create the movie thanks to a documentary.
“In the last 12 years, I started kung fu, an internal martial art. I saw a documentary on that called Master. It is on Prime streaming. As a filmmaker, writer and director, I like to read a lot of classics and the author who wrote Les Misérables, Victor Hugo, wrote his book The Final Day of a Condemned Man. It was a story about capital punishment
in the 1900’s in Paris and how difficult it was.”
The film’s star, Eli Jane, who plays Jane Arcs, had a background in gymnastics, but took her role seriously and trained with an amateur boxer to make the movie as realistic as possible.
“We aim to make it messy and gritty to bring reality. we wanted to introduce the spiritual aspect of these practices,” he said.
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