A self-appointed neighbourhood detective in Cape Town, Claire Abrahams (played by Mikayla Joy Brown), is on a mission: find Optel, the beloved family dog who’s gone missing. Warm, witty, and imaginative, Finding Optel is a family film with bite. We spoke with co-directors Mikayla Joy Brown and Jesse Brown, and director of photography Paul Guyeu, about collaboration, influences, and bringing a different story from South Africa to the London Film Festival.
Co-directing on your debut feature, while wearing multiple other hats – writing and starring – how did you make that work?
Mikayla: Jesse and I have worked really well together since we were young. Our parents made sure we had a good relationship, so we communicate a lot. For this film, we storyboarded everything together and made sure we had the same vision. That meant that on set, there wasn’t confusion or miscommunication, and that really allowed us to have the same voice.
Jesse: I’d also say this is Mikayla’s story – her baby. She was in the driving seat, making the decisions about this world and how it looks. I was very happy to support her. Then the roles changed between pre-production and production: when she was on set and in front of the camera, I took the lead with directing, to make sure we shot the film we wanted. It was a lot of give and take – a kind of dance – to make the film work.
Finding Optel reminded me of so many movies and shows I love, from Amelie to Veronica Mars. What were your biggest influences?
Mykayla and Paul: We would definitely say Amelie – that was one of the references – mixed with Edgar Wright and Wes Anderson. We also watched the British film Scrapper, which helped us a lot with the magical-realist world. Paddington 2 was a big inspiration, too. All those films you can watch with your family and enjoy them together. We wanted it to be family-oriented.
Finding Optel is a feel-good and funny movie, but it also deals with grief. How did you balance those tones?
Mikayla: That's a good question. Grief is such a universal thing, but I wanted to portray it through the lens of a child. The balance of comedy and trauma works because it’s from a child’s perspective. She plays, she sees, and she has a very imaginative world. She doesn’t want to think about death. She actually runs away from it. We played a lot with that, and that's kind of where the comedy comes from, too.
Jesse: As a partnership, Mikayla’s got the more whimsical side to her writing and her style, and I’m much more serious in tone – I watch and like more dramas. Working together balanced it out nicely, because we brought both sides together, and then the team and all the actors pulled it through.
Paul, what guided your approach to shooting this film? What was the biggest challenge?
Paul: Time restrictions were the most challenging thing. We had one week of prep and two weeks to shoot. I would have loved a little more prep, but they [Mikayla and Jesse] were so prepared that it was actually kind of smooth sailing the whole way through. Time was my only struggle. But we made it work with what we had.
How did it feel presenting Finding Optel at the BFI London Film Festival, and what do you hope audiences are taking away from the film?
Mikayla: It’s a big deal for us, because we’re from South Africa, and the fact that this local story can travel… we’re super proud of that. Especially for this type of story and the community that’s represented – the brown community –the narrative is often framed through a lens of gangsterism, violence, crime, and drugs. I really wanted to shift that narrative. Yes, those are real and sad realities in some of these communities, but they’re not the only reality. There’s so much more life there. To bring that to an international stage and show people what the community is actually like – how much hope there is, how vibrant the characters are, how much humour and heart there is– means a lot to us.
Jesse: It’s been quite overwhelming, honestly, and a bit surreal. Even seeing Mikayla’s face in the BFI trailer for the year, knowing our film is in the festival, I’m like, oh my gosh, how did we get here? It’s an incredible privilege. We’ve been so excited, especially to watch it with an audience and feel how they feel. We’ve watched it with a local audience, and we knew people were going to laugh and get emotional, but we were curious to see if it resonated the same way in London.
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