The British director Remi Weekes premiered his debut feature film His House to acclaim at the Sundance film festival in 2020. Earlier this year, the film won four British Independent Film awards, including best director for Weekes, and is nominated for three Baftas this weekend.
“It was just me and my flatmates in the kitchen,” says Remi Weekes of his triumphant evening at the British Independent Film Awards in February. The writer-director of the horror film His House, which was up for 16 awards, was nominated in four separate categories for directing and screenwriting. Before logging on to the ceremony from his Islington flat, he dressed up “a little bit”, putting on a shirt and trousers.
He didn’t expect to win best director, against the likes of Florian Zeller and Sarah Gavron, so when his name was announced there was shock and disorientation in the kitchen.
“It’s like, you’re watching TV and then suddenly the TV’s looking back at you and you’re being projected back into it,” says Weekes, shaking his head at the bizarreness of it all. “If you watch my acceptance speech, you’ll see my flatmate panicking and jumping behind the sofa.”
In his speech, which he read from a Notes document on his laptop, he thanked “family and friends who stood by me throughout this weird and strange career”. Weekes, who is 33, studied film at the London College of Communication and cut his teeth on shorts and commercials before his production company asked him to revise an early version of His House.
“At first I wasn’t sure how to find my way into it,” he says of the script, about a South Sudanese couple assigned to a haunted house on an English council estate in response to an asylum claim. But then, thinking about the diverse communities he grew up around in north London, Weekes zeroed in on the theme of assimilation and “how much of yourself you’re willing to give up to belong”, and the script came together. The resulting film, taut and visually inventive, premiered at Sundance in January 2020 and was released in the UK in October last year. Empire magazine called it “one of the best British horror debuts in years”.
It took four awards in total at the Bifas, and there may be more to come: on 10 April His House is up for three Baftas, including a debut director gong.
“For anyone who loves cinema, to be nominated for a Bafta is really up there in terms of great fantasies,” says Weekes. “When I heard about it, I didn’t quite believe it. Because everything is happening online at the moment, all of this feels very unreal, so I’m pretty stunned and baffled by the whole experience.”
Favourite award ceremony anecdote?
When Daniel Kaluuya was up for his [2018 Rising Star] Bafta, I asked him whether he would write a speech. He didn’t think he would because he wasn’t sure he’d win it. But then he got the award, and he gave a speech, and it was one of the most rousing, beautiful speeches I’ve ever listened to. I was like, man, that’s a star. That’s how you do it. It was just poetry.
Where do you keep your award?
Mine’s right next to me here, above my underwear drawer. It’s a really beautiful award.
• His House is available on Netflix
