Being able to craft relatable stories that capture specific moments of life with humor and love is a natural talent of the most intuitive filmmakers. That’s certainly the case with writer-director Shazeb Fahim, who crafted the realistically complex protagonist of Olivia in the new romantic dramedy, ‘Before We Begin.’

The feature is set to have its World Premiere as the Closing Night Film at this year’s Chelsea Film Festival. The movie will screen in Auditorium 15 at New York City’s Regal 14th St. theater this Sunday, October 20 at 2:00pm.

‘Before We Begin’ stars Yesly Dimate as Olivia, as well as Monica Giordano, Jamie Eddy, Fahim, Paige Hapeman and Andrew Fama. The dramedy follows the protagonist, a young artist living in Boston, as she questions her impending move to New York.

At a dinner party, and a chance encounter the very next day, Olivia finds an original and unexpected connection with Phillip (Fama), a peculiar philosophy student. Over the course of the fall, as her move approaches, Olivia must contend with her evolving relationships, and find the courage to match her ambition and pursue her desires.

Fahim generously took the time earlier this week to talk about penning, helming and producing ‘Before We Begin’ during an exclusive interview over Zoom. Among other things, the filmmaker discussed how the characters in his first feature inspired him to scribe the story for his latest movie. He also noted that he’s excited to screen the dramedy for a public audience during the Chelsea Film Festival this weekend.

Film Factual (FF): You wrote the script for the new romantic dramedy, ‘Before We Begin.’ What was the inspiration in scribing the screenplay for the film?

Shazeb Fahim (SF): It really started with the film I made previously, which was called ‘First Fall.’ That was a movie that really took place the first fall following college graduation.

When I came to the end of writing that script and was about to put it into production, I started thinking, what would happen to those characters in the next turning point of their lives? I really liked this idea of trying to capture the next specific moment of life. I wanted to try to find the essential question underneath that, with some sort of piece of philosophy or psychology.

So that led me to the next age, which was 24. What I found could make an interesting story about young people when they’re ambitious or they’re artistic, and they realize what they really want to do.

But they don’t really know how they’re going to go about doing it. So they have to have a lot of faith in themselves, but they come into a lot of conflict with others at that same time.

So that’s what led to this film before we began – we wanted to try to trace the next coming-of-age turning point.

Other inspirations were just trying to make something quite specific to what I thought my peers would be going through. I wrote the script when I was 22 to 23. We then filmed it when I was 24, and the film is about 24-year-olds.

So each time I’m writing a script, I’m kind of hypothesizing what’s going to happen with myself and my peers. Then as we’re shooting, I’m looking at what’s actually happening in the lives of people I know. If it kind of relates to the film, then there’s something successful therein.

FF: In addition to penning the script for the movie, you also directed the movie. How did writing the script influence your helming style throughout the production? What was your overall approach to directing the film?

SF: Even when you’re directing a script that you’ve written, you have to be objective and take on this entirely new role. You have to be able to read the script objectively and interpret it now.

Your motivation as a writer is different than your motivation as a director. As a director, you’re dealing with visual grammar rather than just the literary grammar as the writer.

So as the director, I had to find some new sort of angle on the script. It was somewhat informed by what was within there, but more by what I was interested in as a director.

Here I saw very delicate and sensitive relationships, and the language was a little bit heightened. It was kind of like an eighth of a degree away from reality.

I was looking at what I was really interested at that time. I was watching a lot of period films; there were the films of Merchant Ivory.

I was also watching the film ‘Bright Star’ by Jane Campion. I like this idea of movies being set in the present day, but having a period sensibility. We’ve seen it a lot now with television shows, where there’s a period show with a modern sensibility to make it a little bit more exciting.

I guess what I did was the inverse; I took a modern setting and put a period sensibility on it for the purpose of trying to create tension again.

If you’re trying to make something very modern, everything’s quite open and fluid. The movie’s exciting because of that.

But it’s a little bit hard. You have to be really exciting to get people going. I thought, if I try to create that period tension, where every glance, touch and word, have so much depth to them, people are going to be on the edge of their seat, waiting for something to happen.

So it was an experiment in that lens. I took every moment of the film and looked at it through that lens. I made sure everyone spoke in a certain way, and all the gestures were through that lens.

Some people have seen the film now, and they have said it took so long to get to that moment, and they were waiting for it. I go, that’s good. I guess there’s a suspense element to it. I like that idea.

So it was an experiment. But I think as a director, you have to have some sort of strong angle.

FF: You also star in ‘Before We Begin,’ alongside Yesly Dimate, Jamie Eddy, Monica Giordano, Paige Hapeman and Andrew Fama. What was the casting process like for the dramedy?

SF: So we had to cast six actors for the six main characters in the film. So we had a really wonderful casting director, Kimberly Graham, who our line producer, Chelsea Fenton, got us in touch with.

She went through quite literally thousands of people because the actors are all meant to be around the age of 24. So there’s so many wonderful young rising actors who can play that.

So her and her team went through those auditions, and they would send us self-tapes. Then my producer, Justin San Antonio, and I, would review those. So some of the roles we got through her.

Some of the actors didn’t audition for the role that they got, which was also really interesting. It was funny because instantly I knew, oh, it’s not meant to be her for this role; she’s meant to be the other character. That’s really exciting.

Paige Hapeman, who’s in this film, was the lead of my previous film. I’ve known her since college. She’s a really wonderful actress. So she’s someone who I had audition. I thought, this is something that she can do.

The most interesting story, though, is in regard to our lead actress, Yesly Dimate. We didn’t find through the casting director.

The casting director gave us hundreds of people, but I just wasn’t connecting with them. I knew it was because in the back of my head, I was thinking about somebody who my close friend from college recommended to me through social media. She’s someone who’s known me for a long time and knows my sensibility. She said, “I think this is someone who would fit into your work,” and it was Yesly.

So we had our casting director reach out to her and she sent in the self-tape. She was great. We had a conversation, and I ultimately cast her in her debut role.

I knew that there’s such a strong lineage of actors in a lead role in their debut film doing something which they could never do otherwise. The further they get into the careers, the more they could get caught up in their craft. They think, how do I look?

But in their debut role, actors are just really relying on instinct. As a director, I just try to guide them through their instinct.

So it really worked out. So I was really, really happy to collaborate well with all of them.

FF: Speaking of collaborating with the actors on the production, once they were cast, how did you create the characters and story together?

SF: There wasn’t a lot of pre-production time on this movie. I think that’s normal in the world of independent films.

I think the role of the director is to try to figure out what their relationship is going to be like with each of the people working on the set, so they can do what only they can do.

Everybody’s different. Sometimes people say, they’re actors, and you label them. They think, we’re going to treat them all the same.

No, these are human beings. Just like everyone in your own life, you have a completely different way of speaking each one of them.

So I just made sure that I was as well versed in all the different kind of acting styles that they could possibly come with. That way, I could communicate with them in those techniques.

Some of them were very craft heavy. We would just kind of go through the script line by line or through the scenes in the morning, and they would make adjustments as need be.

With other actors, we didn’t talk at all about motivation. Some people wanted to know those elements. But with other people, they just wanted to know what happened right before the scene, and what’s going to happen right after? They wanted to just listen to, and react off of, each other.

They were all very easy to work with, though, once I figured out how that worked. Some people you work with over the course of the entire shoot, so you become friends with them.

Then it’s a whole different level of trust, and then you actually are trying not to rehearse as much. So you’re actually saying, “Let’s try to bring our friendship into this.” That kind of spontaneity that you have really helps because then you can kind of make fun of one another. You just have a different sort of comfort.

So that’s how you have to do it. You have to look at everyone individually.

FF: ‘Before We Begin’ is set to have its World Premiere as the Closing Night Film at this year’s Chelsea Film Festival this Sunday, October 20. What does it mean to you that the movie is screening at the festival?

SF: It’s exciting. It’s been a long time because of (last year’s SAG-AFTRA) strike. During the strike, we had to pause work on the film.

Luckily, we had finished shooting the film before that. But we had to restart in the beginning of this year, in terms of deciding when our premiere was going to be.

I’m excited. I’ve heard so often filmmakers say that a film’s only really done when it’s in front of an audience. I’m looking forward to what that sense of completion feels like.

We’ve shown the film to a lot of people privately since then, and I’ve gotten really great response. But for it to be in front of an audience, and to see what the larger reaction is like, is really exciting.

FF: Besides writing and helming the dramedy, you also served as one of the producers with Justin, who you mentioned earlier. How did you approach producing the movie throughout the production?

SF: So Justin was really vital throughout the whole thing because you can’t produce a movie alone, especially when you’re doing all these different roles. I needed another objective viewpoint to say, “Okay, we’re on track, or no, we’re not on track,” based on what your original intentions were.

So we really worked on everything together. After I finished the script, he was one of the first three people I showed it to.

I went through all the edits in that way. We put together all the elements you need in your pitch deck.

He was really vital, especially during the production, because during your production, everything is just surface. I don’t know how these movies get made. I don’t even know how this one got made, to be honest.

So he was dealing with all the fires that had to be put out, so that everyone else could do their creative work. He’s been vital, especially in trying to guide us into this festival and dealing with the premiere. So I received a lot of really wonderful, unconditional support from him.

He’s one of my closest friends, as well, which I think helps a lot. You can either have a very strong and personal relationship, but still also have an objective, business relationship with someone like Justin who’s quite good. That way, they know everything about you, so you can work together on very personal terms, and you’re sensitive to one another in that way.

I also recently read about Billy Wilder, for instance, who was talking about one of his co-writers. He said, “We never asked each other about our weekends. We would just get into the office and we would discuss the work.”

Having a more personal relationship, like what Justin and I have, can be disastrous in some cases. But I think our relationship is one of those rare, one in a million things, where it really worked out. So I’m very grateful to him.

FF: The film is set, and was shot, in Boston. What was the experience like of filming the dramedy on location?

SF: So I lived in Boston for about eight years. I was there for high school and then part of college. So I knew, so to speak, the air of these places.

I think locations are kind of everything in a film, for me at least. The sense of space, and just knowing the texture of places, is so important.

I started with locations that I always had in my head as places that maybe could work for a film. One of our set pieces in the film is the Boston Public Library Courtyard. That’s someplace I used to go to, so I know it. But I’ve never seen it in a film. So I thought this would be so dynamic.

You have to learn as a producer how to secure these locations. You can’t just show up with a film crew anywhere and shoot scenes there.

For the courtyard, I knew that it had never been in a film before, but they’re closed down for weddings. So I just thought, okay, well, I can maybe convince the library that it could work for a film shoot. If not, Plan B was that I was going to tell them my sister was getting married, and we would just shoot our scenes there instead. Justin was not on board with that. (Fahim laughs.)

On our location scout, I went with one of my old friends, who I used to go around Boston with, to find the right places. You just have to find some personal tie to the location because you have to have a point of view on it when you’re both acting and directing it. That’s especially true if your characters are from that place, as there has to be some sort of sense of history.

Luckily, we had our production designer, Zachary Lanao, help out on the film. He was able to alter any place that didn’t completely fit the style I was going for. There’s a lot of movie magic that can be done.