Last seen in Mogul Mowgli (2020), Emmy Award-winning actor Riz Ahmed is presently awaiting the release of his next film Encounter wherein he plays the character of a marine who sets out on a secret mission to save his two sons (Lucian-River Chauhan and Aditya Geddada) from a mysterious alien threat. The Michael Pearce directorial also features Octavia Spencer and Rory Cochrane on the cast.
Speaking to a digital publication, Pearce shared that Encounter shares a lot of its DNA with his 2017 debut Beast. He said, “I wanted to continue what I started with Beast, which was to take an antihero and do a sympathetic portrait of them by putting them inside a story engine that was amplified by genre. So, I was reading a lot of scripts to see what could tick that box, and there were not that many. Then I came across Joe Barton’s script, and I really related to the family dynamic.”
He further said, “I grew up with a younger brother, and for a lot of my childhood I had a single father who was in the army. So, I really knew what those guys were going through, because when we were the same ages as the characters in the film, we went through a crisis, or series of crises, and we had to navigate through that as a family.”
When asked about casting Ahmed in the role of Malik Khan, Pearce said, “The film plays with some cosmic themes, but I knew that the main spectacle of the film had to be the performances. And so, when Riz got hold of the script and pitched for it, it was a lightbulb moment — I just thought, ‘I could buy him as a Marine.’ He has got that laser focus. He is a sweet guy, but there is also a toughness that he hides, but it is there. A kind of grit and fortitude.”
Encounter is due in cinemas on December 3, 2021.
Alia Bhatt at the Red Sea Film Festival where she spoke about the scale of Alpha Getty Images 
