Like many filmmakers on the verge of becoming parents, Ba director Benjamin Wong worried that having a child might hurt his creativity: Would he have time to labor over screenplays while caring for a small new person?
“There’s this pressure in that season in your life, before you have children, to make your career — to make things happen,” he says. “But there was that feeling of doom, in a way, too: I have to give up this passion for filmmaking and pursuing film, which seems so impractical once you have a kid.”
But what happened was the opposite of what he feared: The birth of his daughter fired his creativity and became the impetus for his debut feature Ba, which is Chinese shorthand for “father.”
The film is a heartfelt horror story about a desperate, borderline homeless Los Angeles single dad, David (Lawrence Kao), who becomes Death in order to support his daughter (Kai Cech).
“I’m so thankful,” says Wong. “”Having my daughter allowed me to experience feelings and emotions that 1,000% went into the screenplay.”
Taking on a decaying form, Daniel visits people who are near death and reaps their souls with a skeletal touch. Wong sees it as a metaphor for the kinds of grim, thankless jobs that most people would never want, but that parents take on to provide for their children.
“I think the film is a way to explore those themes of, ‘Just what would you do for your for your child? How far would you go? Where would you draw the line?’ And I think the line goes really far.”
He notes that the Ba‘s embrace of a horror film setup gave him freedom to explore fears that all parents share, with a little distance.
“I think this film sort of straddles the line between genre and drama, which was an interesting space to explore,” he says. “Genre is just a way for me to really explore all the feelings that I have as a parent, but with a bit of a different palette. When it’s not a straight drama, but you sort of add this supernatural element, it allows me to explore these really dark and scary feelings.”
Benjamin Wong’s Journey to Making Ba
Wong always wanted to be a filmmaker, but it didn’t feel practical. He started out studying engineering in college, then got a Master’s in computer science. That led to web design, and eventually commercial work. When he was approaching 30, a friend asked him if he wanted to direct a YouTube commercial. Soon, the film bug bit again.
He started writing scripts and making short films — until a producer friend, Elizabeth Ai, gave him some advice.
“She’s like, ‘Don’t do shorts. When you make shorts you have to find locations, you have to cast, all that stuff. There’s so much effort producing a short that if you’re gonna do a short, just do a feature.'”
She eventually became a producer on Ba.
He hit a bump on the way to making a feature, one that many screenwriters experience. He was deep into a script that he wanted to turn into a feature when he turned on an episode of Black Mirror and realized it was strikingly, frustratingly similar to his idea.
Like many writers who’ve been through that experience, he felt a mix of frustration — he would need to abandon his idea — and validation: At least his idea was good enough for Black Mirror. He chalked it up to the zeitgeist.
“We’re all probably pulling and sharing and getting these ideas from the same shared experience,” he says.
Ba Influences
Ba pulls not only from Wong’s experiences with fatherhood, but his experience volunteering in Downtown Los Angeles with School on Wheels, a program that provides free tutoring and mentoring to children living in shelters, motels, vehicles, foster homes, or on the streets. His volunteering gave him a painful understanding of what life is like for parents and kids with little sense of stability.
The film shot during Covid lockdowns, and the emptiness of the L.A. streets adds to the film’s ominous, unshakeable atmospherics. While he knew no one wanted another Covid movie, certain elements of the time did pervade Ba, including a collective fear of death, and resistance to a wave of anti-Asian hatred.
The divisive of the era made him think about “the most unappealing character we can develop empathy for. And so Death is up there.”
Ba makes you root hard for David’s personification of Death.
“Just spend five minutes with this guy, and then you’re hopefully on their side, and you’re just on their journey. Some empathy is unlocked, a new perspective is unlocked,” Wong says.
He made Ba on a very small budget, seeking investors and favors. That meant building his schedule around the time commitments of everyone who pitched in.
The film had a successful festival run that included the prestigious Cinequest, Austin Film Festival and FilmQuest, and was picked up by Ethos Releasing, a new filmmaker-first, boutique film distribution company founded by Noah Lang and Rod Blackhurst.
That success meant doing some promotion. As he sat down to write his director’s statement — the explanation for the film that accompanies its publicity materials — his daughter interrupted him, asking him to play with her.
So that’s what he did.
Ba is now available on video on demand.
Main image: Lawrence Kao becomes Death in Ba. Ethos Releasing