Bahrain-born director Hala Matar shares the inspiration behind her on-set drama featuring Johnny Knoxville, Matthew Gray Gubler and Nymphomaniac star Sophie Kennedy Clark: 

“The story for Desire came to me late one night in a derelict New York apartment right before I moved to Los Angeles. I couldn’t sleep because there was a rat roaming around so I turned on the Vertigo soundtrack and wrote this instead. 

 “In retrospect, I can see that the film is very much inspired by a play I read in college called Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello. One of my biggest takeaways from that play was that death (symbolized as a gunshot in the play) is the only truth. And setting the film during Hollywood’s Golden Age felt like the most natural thing to do given the themes I’m exploring – femme fatale, revenge and jealousy are dominant features of that era.”